Israel condemns support for Palestinian state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sharply denounced Western countries on Friday for embracing Palestinian statehood, accusing them of sending the message that “murdering Jews pays off.”
Speaking at the UN General Assembly, the Israeli leader pushed back in his harshest terms yet against a flurry of diplomatic moves by leading US allies that deepened Israel’s international isolation over its conduct of a nearly two-year-old war in Gaza against Hamas following the militants’ October 7, 2023, rampage in Israel that killed some 1,200 people.
Israel’s military response has killed more than 65,000 people in Gaza, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.
Scores of delegates exited the hall as Netanyahu took the stage while some attendees in the balcony gave him a standing ovation. At the same time, thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters blocked traffic near Times Square in New York.
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said in a statement that Netanyahu’s speech was “filled with lies and blatant contradictions” and condemned it as a “desperate attempt to justify the war crimes and acts of genocide”.
Frustration over Israel’s military siege and US President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to rein Netanyahu in has spilled into the open at the annual New York gathering where, in a dramatic shift, Australia, Britain, Canada and France and several other nations embraced a Palestinian state.
They said such action was needed to preserve the prospect for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and help bring the war to a close.
Photo: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu