Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday canceled a planned trip to Washington by his top aides to discuss plans for an offensive in the Gaza city of Rafah, taking the step after the United States refrained from using a veto to block a United Nations Security Council resolution, backed by Russia and China, that called for a ceasefire without conditioning it on the release of hostages.

In a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, Israel said the US was harming the war effort against Hamas and attempts to free hostages with its decision.

The statement called the decision “a clear retreat from the consistent US position in the Security Council since the beginning of the war,” and one that “gives Hamas hope that international pressure will allow them to get a ceasefire without releasing our hostages.”

In response, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told journalists: “We’re very disappointed that they won’t be coming to Washington, DC to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to going in on the ground in Rafah.”

Kirby insisted that the vote “does not represent a shift in our policy,” and said the United States abstained because the text did not condemn Hamas.

“We’ve been consistent in our support [for] a ceasefire as part of a hostage deal,” he said.

Netanyahu warned shortly before the vote that he would call off the visit of National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer to Washington if the US veto was not used on UNSC Resolution 2728.

The two senior aides were set to fly to the US capital to hear American proposals for expanded humanitarian aid in Gaza and alternatives to a major land operation in Rafah. The trip was planned at the request of US President Joe Biden after his call with Netanyahu last week.

The UN Security Council passed on Monday the resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, but did not make the former conditional on the latter.

The US abstained from the vote, allowing a ceasefire demand to pass for the first time since the start of the war in October.

The remaining 14 council members voted for the resolution, which was proposed by the 10 elected, non-permanent members of the body.

Washington had been averse to the word ceasefire earlier in the nearly six-month-old war in the Gaza Strip and had used its veto power to block previous resolutions.

The resolution “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.”

The Security Council resolution also “emphasizes the urgent need to expand the flow of humanitarian assistance to and reinforce the protection of civilians in the entire Gaza Strip and reiterates its demand for the lifting of all barriers to the provision of humanitarian assistance at scale.”

US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield argued that the meaning of the resolution passed in the Security Council was that a ceasefire in Gaza must be part of an agreement to release the hostages — though this is not what the text actually said.

France welcomed the resolution, saying in a tweet by its UN ambassador that “it was time to demand a ceasefire and the release of all hostages, and to call for full humanitarian access & a massive aid to Gaza.”

One hundred and thirty hostages are still held by terror groups in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw thousands of terrorists burst into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping another 253, mostly civilians.

Netanyahu and the Biden administration have been locked in a growing public spat over a potential ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. During the phone call last week, Biden made it clear to Netanyahu that the US does not want to see a massive IDF ground incursion into Rafah, even if civilians are moved to a safer location in the Gaza Strip.

He requested that Netanyahu send senior officials to hear US proposals for an alternative to a ground operation.

For months, the White House had been saying publicly it would only support an Israeli conquest of the southern Gaza city — the last one in Hamas hands — if Jerusalem made sure to do so in a way that does not endanger the 1.5 million civilians there, many of whom Israel had sent south in the early stages of the campaign.

Netanyahu, along with his war leadership, has insisted that there is no way to defeat Hamas without taking Rafah. Four Hamas battalions remain in the city and — perhaps more importantly — it sits on the border with Egypt. Israel suspects the terrorist organization tunneled under the Gaza border to smuggle in massive shipments of guns, explosives and rockets over the last decade and a half.

The UNSC vote comes after Russia and China vetoed a US-sponsored resolution last week that would have supported “an immediate and sustained ceasefire” in the Israeli-Hamas conflict, but which more directly tied that demand to the release of hostages.

Monday’s resolution was also backed by the 22-nation Arab Group at the UN.

A statement issued Friday night by the Arab Group appealed to all 15 council members “to act with unity and urgency” and vote for the resolution “to halt the bloodshed, preserve human lives and avert further human suffering and destruction.”

The vote was originally scheduled for Saturday morning, but its sponsors asked late Friday for a delay until Monday morning.

The Security Council previously adopted two resolutions on the worsening humanitarian situation in Gaza, but none has called for a ceasefire.

More than 32,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during the fighting, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry. The figure cannot be independently verified and does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its count. Israel says it has killed some 13,000 Hamas terror operatives in battle, as well as some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Gaza also faces a humanitarian emergency, with a report from an international authority on hunger warning on March 18 that “famine is imminent” in northern Gaza and that escalation of the war could push half of the territory’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation.