source : the age
Thank you for joining our live coverage as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York at 2pm Thursday local time (4am Friday AEST). You can watch a livestream of that below.
Netanyahu arrived in the US earlier on Thursday and has a “tight schedule”, his office has said.
The Israeli leader is to meet with the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Panama and Paraguay and the vice president of Colombia, and with the prime ministers of Greece, Papua New Guinea and Slovenia. His office did not say if meetings were planned with US officials.
He will then fly back on the same day. Netanyahu is not expected to meet with US President Donald Trump, who is hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House for a bilateral meeting.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN General Assembly on Thursday (US time), delivering prerecorded remarks from his office in Ramallah after the United States denied him and other top Palestinian officials visas to attend the gathering for the second year in a row.
The 90-year-old leader’s popularity at home and relevance abroad have both waned. But in his remarks, Abbas made clear he did not intend to quietly accept being sidelined.
“We will not leave our homeland. We will not accept displacement. And we will not allow anyone to decide our future on our behalf,” Abbas said.
Though world leaders have repeatedly invoked the plight of Palestinians in speeches throughout the week, Abbas urged the international community to take more tangible action against Israel.
“How long will some countries continue to remain silent about Israel, or continue supplying it with weapons that it uses against our people? The world has witnessed the enormous cost in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” Abbas said. “What, then, is the international community waiting for before it acts to protect the Palestinian people?”
AP
Netanyahu’s address comes a day after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian declared his country would not be cowed into surrender in a defiant speech to the United Nations after US President Donald Trump used the same stage to renew his threat to “annihilate” Iran.
Pezeshkian’s speech marked the first time in the UN’s 81-year history that a foreign leader at war with the US addressed the body at its New York headquarters.
Pezeshkian claimed Iran was ready to resume talks and find a diplomatic solution to the war – an outcome that has eluded negotiators so far, despite a short-lived memorandum of understanding signed with the US in June.
But his speech projected resistance to any notion that Iran could be bombed into subjugation, as Trump had countenanced from the podium 24 hours earlier.
Read more from North America correspondent Michael Koziol here.
Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to use his UN address to berate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for calling him a war criminal, a feud that highlights the Israeli leader’s growing isolation ahead of elections at home that he may lose.
Addressing the mayor directly in a video statement this week, Netanyahu said he was going to New York “to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers” and “to tell the truth about you.” He falsely accused Mamdani of supporting Hamas militants.
Mamdani campaigned for office on a promise to have Netanyahu arrested for alleged war crimes should he visit the largest US city but later said he determined he lacked the legal authority to do so. This week, Mamdani described Netanyahu as “the architect of a horrific genocide against Palestinians”.
Netanyahu, who rejects war crimes allegations, will be making his first visit to New York since Mamdani took office in January. Israelis opposed to Netanyahu’s right-wing government are planning to protest in New York.
As Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in New York, US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping began their high-stakes bilateral meeting at the White House.
Trump noted there had been many physical changes at the White House since Xi’s last visit in 2015, and praised his “truly great friendship” with the Chinese leader.
In relatively brief remarks, Trump spoke in broad terms about efforts to create “a more balanced trade relationship” between the world’s two largest economies, and doubled down on his attempt to rebrand artificial intelligence “super intelligence”.
“If we focus on our common interests, I am confident there is much we can achieve,” he said.
Thank you for joining our live coverage as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York at 2pm Thursday local time (4am Friday AEST). You can watch a livestream of that below.
Netanyahu arrived in the US earlier on Thursday and has a “tight schedule”, his office has said.
The Israeli leader is to meet with the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Panama and Paraguay and the vice president of Colombia, and with the prime ministers of Greece, Papua New Guinea and Slovenia. His office did not say if meetings were planned with US officials.
He will then fly back on the same day. Netanyahu is not expected to meet with US President Donald Trump, who is hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House for a bilateral meeting.
