UN General Assembly 2025: Palestine and Gaza dominate day one
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on 26 September 2024
Sean Mathews and Shaheryar Mirza report in Middle East Eye on 23 September 2025:
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres kicked off the 80th United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday at the UN headquarters in New York City with an appeal to strengthen multilateralism and position the UN as a “moral compass” that can alleviate the myriad crises facing the world.
Guterres called on member states to “reaffirm” the deteriorated rule of international law. “Our ability to carry out that work is being cut from us. We’ve entered an age of reckless disruption and relentless human suffering. Look around. The principles of the UN that you have established are under siege.”
Before addressing the situation in Gaza, Guterres warned that “sovereign nations are being invaded, hunger weaponised and truth silenced”.
On Gaza, Guterres said the “horrors” are a result of decisions that “defy basic humanity”. “The scale of death and destruction are beyond any other conflict in my years as secretary-general.” Guterres raised the International Court of Justice’s case regarding Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the legally binding measures the court has issued, saying that they must be “fully and immediately” implemented, to a round of applause from the room.
“Nothing can justify the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7th. And nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people and the systematic destruction of Gaza. We know what is needed. Permanent ceasefire, now. All the hostages released, now. Full humanitarian access, now.”
Guterres then reaffirmed that a two-state solution in Palestine was the only viable answer to sustainable peace in the Middle East and warned of rising Israeli settler expansion and the “looming threat of annexation”, alluding to Israel’s threats to annex the occupied West Bank.
Brazil: Palestinian people at risk of disappearing
In keeping with a decades-long tradition, Brazil was the first country to address world leaders at the General Assembly.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva put Palestine at the heart of his argument that multilateralism and the UN’s founding principle’s “are under threat as never before”. “We are witnessing the consolidation of an international order marked by repeated concessions to power play,” he said. “Attacks on sovereignty, arbitrary sanctions and unilateral interventions are becoming the rule.”
In Gaza, he said, “we can see that international humanitarian law and the myth of ethical exceptionalism of the West are being buried”. “Nothing, absolutely nothing, justifies the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Lula said, adding that “this massacre would not have happened without the complicity of those who could have prevented it”, in a swipe at US support for Israel’s war.