It took 40 days for the UN Security Council to come up with a form of words to address the spiral of violence in the Middle East. In that time, some 12,000 people were killed. On Wednesday, a call for "extended humanitarian pauses for a sufficient number of days" squeaked through the Council, this time without any vetoes from the permanent members, although three abstained. It was the fifth time the Council had voted on a text. Why did it take so long? The simple explanation is that there was no getting the word "ceasefire" past the United States, Israel's…