UNITED NATIONS, December 13. /TASS/. Russia hopes that the United Nations Security Council will follow UN General Assembly’s lead and demand an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said.

"We hope that after the General Assembly, the UN Security Council will finally fulfil its obligations. The more so as representatives of the United Arab Emirates have drafted and referred for consideration another document on expanding and monitoring humanitarian deliveries to Gaza," he said at a special emergency session of the UN General Assembly on defending the Palestinian people.

"We are actually witnessing the implementation of a plan to bomb the Gaza Strip into a Stone Age," he said. "I regret to say that over this time the United Nations’ collective efforts have brought about no desired result. But the reason is not in the failure of multilateral diplomacy or in the Security Council’s inability to do its job, as some are saying."

On December 12, the UN General Assembly passed an Egypt-and Mauritania-initiated resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in the zone of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

As many as 153 member nations, including Russia, China, Brazil, Iran, Spain, Canada, Cuba, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, France, Switzerland, and Sweden, voted in favor of the resolution, ten countries, including Austria, Israel, the United States, and the Czech Republic, were against, while twenty-three, including the United Kingdom, Germany, and Ukraine, abstained.