Netanyahu’s lies in the United Nations

United Nations General Assembly

Amos Schocken writes in Haaretz on 2 October 2024:

At the beginning of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations on Friday, he said that he hadn’t intended to come to speak that he hadn’t intended to come to speak because his country is at war, but in the end decided to come in order to refute the lies told about Israel in the speeches of other leaders preceding him.

He said he had decided to come and tell the truth. And the truth is that Israel pursues peace, aspires to peace, has made peace and will continue to make peace. But it’s confronting cruel enemies who want to destroy it.

The truth is that there’s no greater lie than this “truth” of Netanyahu’s. Netanyahu has never wanted peace with the Palestinians. In 1995, he incited against then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords as a first step towards fulfillment of the two-state solution – the only solution that can bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  During his first term, after Rabin’s murder, from 1996 to 1999, Netanyahu did only what Israel had committed to prior to his election, and signed the Wye River Memorandum in October 1998, but the agreement wasn’t implemented due to complaints from both sides.

In 2009 he was reelected, and served for 12 consecutive years until 2021. During this period he managed to torpedo the attempt by then-U.S. President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

He has never initiated negotiations on his own with the Palestinian Authority about the future of the occupation in the territories. In order to avoid any negotiations with the PA, he humiliated it and strengthened Hamas – so he could say that the PA doesn’t represent all the Palestinians.

Netanyahu isn’t interested in peace with the Palestinians, because he isn’t willing to give up the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. According to the guidelines of his present government, the exclusive right to settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel, including the occupied territories, belongs only to the Jewish people. And the map he presented in his UN speech is from the river to the sea, as the extremists on both sides are demanding.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says the Palestinian state that he wants to establish must include the areas in the West Bank that were occupied in June 1967, and the Gaza Strip. Netanyahu isn’t willing to hear of it, although without an agreement on that, there won’t be peace with the Palestinians. According to Netanyahu, the Palestinians aren’t allowed to want to establish a state even on an area smaller than that marked on the UN Partition Plan of November 1947.

It should be stressed that Israel violated its promise in the peace agreement with Egypt and is violating international law when it allows its citizens to live in an occupied area, and allows the distancing from this area of Palestinians for whom it is designated.

There were other lies in Netanyahu’s speech. According to him there are two options: one is a blessing of peace and prosperity for Israel, its Arab neighbors and the rest of the world. In this context he devoted particular attention to cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The other option is a curse, in which Iran and its proxies in various countries will bring about slaughter, bloodletting and destruction.

Netanyahu is concealing the fact that Saudi Arabia is conditioning its cooperation with Israel, the blessing of peace, on the advancement of a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by establishing a Palestinian state. Netanyahu is deceiving his listeners by saying that he prefers the blessed solution, because in effect he is preventing it, by his intention of continuing the cruel apartheid regime in the territories and Israel’s denial of the Palestinians’ rights. It’s shocking that this will be the legacy of his tenure: apartheid and terror.

Another lie of Netanyahu’s is that we’re constantly focused on the sacred mission of freeing the hostages being held in Gaza, and that we won’t stop until we bring them all back. The truth is the opposite. Netanyahu isn’t willing to do what’s required to bring back the hostages, and several times has prevented Israel’s representatives in the negotiations from reaching an agreement, because each time he put in additional Israeli demands that the representatives had been willing to waive. He should at least tell the truth about this, rather than lie.

In his speech, Netanyahu asked the UN Security Council to renew the sanctions against Iran to prevent it from achieving nuclear capability. But he has ignored a UN Security Council resolution from 2016, which determined that it’s forbidden to increase the population of settlers in the occupied territories, even as a result of natural growth; and that we have to dismantle all the settlements established since March 2001; and that the residence of Israeli citizens in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, contradicts international law and a Security Council resolution, and is the main obstacle to the two-state solution and long-term peace.

Sanctions should be imposed on Netanyahu and on ministers in his government who are promoting settlement in the occupied territories, and on the Israeli citizens living in them.

Netanyahu is lying when he accused Abbas of failing to condemn the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. Abbas said the Palestinians have a right to defend themselves, and condemned the harming of civilians on both sides.

Netanyahu is lying when he claims that Abbas is conducting a diplomatic war against Israel’s right to exist. Abbas recognizes Israel’s right to exist. He is conducting a diplomatic war against the occupation and apartheid. That’s his prerogative, and he shouldn’t be punished for that.

When Netanyahu mentioned in his speech that the Israeli judicial system is independent and should receive the same treatment from the International Criminal Court prosecutor as other democracies, he’s lying to his listeners, because he’s concealing the fact that even now, he is conducting a move designed to eliminate the independence of the Israeli judicial system.

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