Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his claim to the world on Friday, addressing the international community where his country faces pressure and isolation against a devastating attack on Gaza.
Netanyahu took an extraordinary route to his annual speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. His flight route appears to avoid a country that can enforce international arrest warrants on suspicion of war crimes in Gaza.
He is also expected to meet President Donald Trump. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would not allow the annexation of the already occupied West Bank to be annexed due to a wave of countries recognised the Palestinian state.
Netanyahu said he planned to “speak our truth, the truth about Israeli citizens, the truth about our IDF soldiers, and the truth about our country.”
He also said he planned to “denounce” the list of growth in Western countries that officially acknowledged Palestine as a nation in response to his intensifying military movement.
Israeli forces have stepped up attacks on the hungry city of Gaza, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate, others have been placed under a deadly strike that lasts almost a day.
It also comes after Trump issued a firm warning that Israeli leadership would not allow the West Bank to annex it if he tried to move forward with plans to spark new global outrage.
“I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank. No, I will not allow it. That won’t happen,” Trump told reporters, previously personally asserting Arab leaders about the subject.
When asked if he had discussed the issue with Netanyahu, Trump said, “Whether I told him or not, I did, but I have not allowed Israel to annex the West Bank.”
“It was enough. It’s time to stop now,” he said.
Trump issued rare advice after far-right members of Netanyahu’s vulnerable government coalition called for the move.
The Palestinians envision the West Bank, along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, as an important territory for an internationally recognized Palestinian state. Annexation of territory occupied by Israel since 1967 will put its cause even more at risk.
Trump also presented Arab leaders with a 21-point plan for peace, and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said the meeting was “productive” and a breakthrough could be imminent.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was also one of the leaders in dealing with UNGA, but was forced to deliver addresses per video after the US revoked visas for other Palestinian authorities last month.
In his video speech, Abbas said that the Palestinians in Gaza are facing Israel’s “war of genocide, destruction, hunger and displacement,” adding that “in spite of everything our people were suffering, Hamas refused to do what they did on October 7th.”
Abbas said that the future Hamas imagined for Gaza “has no role to play in governance.”
Its future will rest on the Peace Conference, where Netanyahu will speak to world leaders while still under pressure from his nearest allies and his ministers, as well as the hostage families still held in Gaza.
Israeli leaders have previously ignored their protests asking him to make a contract to end the war and free his loved ones.
