Editorial: World must hope Joe Biden’s ceasefire deal can end the killing in Gaza

So it will be fervently hoped that the UN Security Council’s passing of a US resolution backing president Joe Biden’s Gaza ceasefire plan marks the beginning of a constructive engagement to silence the guns and end the carnage.

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been poured into defence and offence in the area. But perversely, as the deaths mounted, the urgency of opening up a front to pursue a permanent end to hostilities appeared to have become ever more lost in the deepening fog of war. So Washington’s initiative to increase pressure on Israel and Hamas to end the fighting must be the turning point the people of the region desperately deserve.

Objectives that negate terrorism, end the mass destruction and desolation, and embrace a two-state solution have to be hammered out.

Each delay brings new horrors. The UN human rights office has announced it is “profoundly shocked” at the impact on civilians of the Israeli operation to rescue hostages held by Hamas. The action “seriously calls into question whether the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution… were respected” and could amount to war crimes, it said.

Palestinian health officials claim hundreds of people were killed in the densely populated Nuseirat refugee camp on Saturday. Israel’s military said fewer than 100 were killed. It cannot be disputed that too many innocent lives were lost.

A second phase of the US plan would lead, “upon agreement of the parties”, to a permanent ceasefire; the release of the remaining hostages; and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

Hamas has signalled it accepts the ceasefire resolution and is ready to negotiate over details. Tel Aviv has also sent positive messages. Formal agreement by either side is still awaited.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken – on his eighth visit to the region since October – is hoping this could be the breakthrough. But the resignation of the more moderate Israeli opposition leader Benny Gantz from the war cabinet of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not helped. He had become Washington’s point man, and was pressing for new elections.

Either way, Biden has clearly concluded the time to end the war has come. The indiscriminate carnage – and accusations of dual standards in calling for peace while also being Israel’s biggest supplier of arms – are hurting him domestically and internationally.

If hostilities continue, at least a million Palestinians are at risk of starvation by the middle of next month, the UN has warned. At least 37,124 people have been killed and 84,712 injured in Gaza since last October.

Accurate death toll figures are hard to ascertain in any war zone. But no one can argue that the immense human suffering is unconscionable. Ending the killing is the only goal that matters.