Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing a difficult reelection campaign at home, delivered a fiery UN speech Thursday assailing enemies and allies alike — and sparking uproar in the chamber.
And French President Emmanuel Macron drew Israel’s ire for claiming in his own UN speech that Hamas was not active in the West Bank. Hamas’ stronghold has traditionally been Gaza. “They accuse Israel, tiny Israel, of colonialism — some colonialism. And who’s accusing us? Among them are people in Britain and in France.
In a video message played ahead of Netanyahu’s speech, Abbas said, “We reject these unlawful punitive measures, and we reject the accusations and justifications on which they were based. For God’s sakes, they invented the term,” he said. He said the war in which Israeli and US forces have attacked Iran for close to seven months had stopped Tehran from being able to develop nuclear weapons. “I vowed to prevent Iran’s murderous dictatorship from developing atomic bombs, nuclear weapons aimed at destroying Israel, nuclear weapons that could threaten the entire world,” he said.
Netanyahu denies the ICC claims. One of Netanyahu’s fiercest critics, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, was unable to attend the UN gathering after the Trump administration refused him a visa. The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) said in 2024 it had reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu was responsible for war crimes in the Gaza campaign, which responded to Hamas’ deadly October 7, 2023 attacks.
