India has voted in favour of a United Nations resolution that condemns Israeli settlements in Palestine, reports NDTV.
The resolution, condemning settlement activities in "Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan", was approved on Thursday.
Among the seven countries that opposed it are the United States and Canada. Eighteen countries abstained from the vote.
This comes weeks after India abstained from a vote on a UN resolution calling for "immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce" between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
The war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the October 7 attacks on Israel, has claimed over 11,000 lives in Gaza. About 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attacks and over 200 taken hostage.
Explaining its decision to abstain in the earlier vote, sources in the government had said India is concerned over the unfolding humanitarian crisis in Gaza but also believes that there can be no equivocation on terror.
"The Resolution in the UNGA did not include any explicit condemnation of the terrorist attacks of October 7. An amendment was moved to include this aspect, prior to the vote on the main resolution," a source told news agency PTI.
India voted in favour of the amendment and it obtained 88 votes in favour but not the requisite two-thirds majority, the source said.
Soon after the October 7 attacks, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had described the Hamas strike as a "terrorist" action. The government`s unequivocal support for Tel Aviv, with no mention of Palestine, has turned into a more balanced response to the crisis as the war`s human cost climbs.
In later statements on the issue, the Ministry of External Affairs has said it had "always advocated... direct negotiations towards establishing... a sovereign, independent, and viable state of Palestine".
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