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NEW YORK: Encircled by critics and protesters at the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow world leaders on Friday that his nation “must finish the job” against Hamas in Gaza, giving a defiant speech despite growing international isolation over his refusal to end the devastating war. “Western leaders may have buckled under the pressure,” he said. “And I guarantee you one thing: Israel won’t.”

Netanyahu’s speech, aimed as much at his increasingly divided domestic audience as the global one, began after dozens of delegates from multiple nations walked out of the UN General Assembly hall en masse Friday as he began.

Responding to countries’ recent decisions to recognize Palestinian statehood, Netanyahu said: “Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere.”

As the Israeli leader spoke, unintelligible shouts echoed around the hall, while applause came from supporters in the gallery.

The US delegation, which has backed Netanyahu in his campaign against Hamas, stayed put. The few world powers in attendance, the United States and the United Kingdom, did not send their most senior officials or even their UN ambassador to their section. Instead, it was filled out with more junior, low-level diplomats.

“Anti-semitism dies hard. In fact, it doesn’t die at all,” Netanyahu said. Netanyahu routinely accuses his critics of antisemitism.

Netanyahu faces international isolation, accusations of war crimes and growing pressure to end a conflict he has continued to escalate. Friday’s speech was his chance to push back on the international community’s biggest platform.

As he has often in the past at the United Nations, Netanyahu held up a visual aid — a map of the region titled “THE CURSE,” which chronicles Israel’s challenges in its neighborhood. He marked it up with a large marker. He wore — and pointed out — a pin with a QR code that leads to a site about the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that led to the war and about the Israeli hostages taken by the militants. Members of the Israeli delegation wore similar pins.

Netanyahu also frequently praised President Donald Trump, his chief ally in his political and military approach in the region. Netanyahu said the changes across the Mideast have created new opportunities. He said Israel has begun negotiations with Syria aimed at reaching security arrangements with the country’s new government.

The Israeli government took steps Friday to ensure that those in Gaza heard Netanyahu, setting up loudspeakers at the border to blast his words into the territory. The prime minister’s office also claimed that the Israeli army had taken over mobile phones in Gaza to broadcast his message. AP journalists inside Gaza saw no immediate evidence of Netanyahu’s speech being broadcast on phones there.

Netanyahu said the special measures were taken in an attempt to reach the Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza. He spoke in Hebrew at one point, and he read the names of the 20 who are believed to still be alive. But much of his speech was also aimed at an international audience that is increasingly critical of Israel.

A closely watched speech

Netanyahu’s annual speech to the UN General Assembly is always closely watched, often protested, reliably emphatic and sometimes a venue for dramatic allegations. But this time, the stakes were higher than ever for the Israeli leader.

In recent days, Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and others announced their recognition of an independent Palestinian state. The European Union is considering tariffs and sanctions on Israel. The assembly this month passed a nonbinding resolution urging Israel to commit to an independent Palestinian nation, which Netanyahu has said is a non-starter.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant accusing Netanyahu of crimes against humanity, which he denies. And the UN’s highest court is weighing South Africa’s allegation that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, which it vehemently refutes.

As Netanyahu spoke Friday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered a few blocks from the heavily secured United Nations.

“Israel has chosen a war against every conscientious human being in this world,” said Nidaa Lafi, an organizer with Palestinian Youth Movement, prompting chants of “shame” from the growing crowd. “The masses have come to the irreversible realization that this war was always about the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine, about the exploitation and the stealing of Palestinian land.”

Opposition to Netanyahu’s approach is growing

At a special session of the UN Security Council this week, nation after nation expressed horror at the 2023 attack by Hamas militants that killed about 1,200 people in Israel, saw 251 taken hostage and triggered the war. Many of the representatives went on to criticize the response by Israel and call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and influx of aid.

Israel’s sweeping offensive has killed more than 65,000 Palestinians in Gaza and displaced 90 percent of its population, with an increasing number now starving.

While more than 150 countries now recognize a Palestinian state, the United States has not, providing Israel with vociferous support. But Trump pointedly signaled Thursday there are limits, telling reporters in Washington that he wouldn’t let Israel annex the occupied West Bank.

Israel hasn’t announced such a move, but several leading members in Netanyahu’s government have advocated doing so. And officials recently approved a controversial settlement project that would effectively cut the West Bank in two, a move that critics say could doom chances for a Palestinian state. Trump and Netanyahu are scheduled to meet during his visit.

Netanyahu’s office also “instructed civilian groups in cooperation with the army to place loudspeakers on trucks on the Israeli side of the border,” it said in a statement, noting that the broadcasts would be arranged so they would not endanger soldiers.

Palestinians had their UN say the day before

Netanyahu was preceded at the leaders’ meeting a day earlier by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who addressed the General Assembly via video on Thurdsay after the US denied him a visa. He welcomed the recent announcements of recognition but said the world needs to do more to make statehood happen.

“The time has come for the international community to do right by the Palestinian people” and help them realize “their legitimate rights to be rid of the occupation and to not remain a hostage to the temperament of Israeli politics,” he said.

Abbas leads the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority, which administers portions of the West Bank. Hamas won legislative elections in Gaza in 2006 before seizing control from Abbas’ forces the following year.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war, then withdrew from Gaza in 2005. The Palestinians want all three territories to form their envisioned state, part of a “two-state solution” that the international community has embraced for decades.

Netanyahu opposes it robustly, maintaining that creating a Palestinian state would reward Hamas. In his speech, Netanyahu insisted that Israel is battling radical Islam on behalf of all nations.

“You know deep down,” he said, “that Israel is fighting your fight.”

CAIRO/GENEVA: Since Israel shut a vital corridor into famine-stricken northern Gaza before escalating its ground offensive this month, community kitchens and health clinics have closed and vital flows of food have slowed, residents and UN agencies say.
The Zikim Crossing was shut on September 12, days ahead of an Israeli ground offensive on Gaza City in the north of the territory, prompting warnings from aid agencies.
Since then, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) told Reuters it had not managed to bring any supplies through Zikim, previously the route for half its food deliveries into Gaza.
There has been a reduction of about 50,000 daily meals in northern Gaza compared to 109,000 daily meals before Zikim closed, as some kitchens in Gaza City serving free meals shut, according to Amjad Al-Shawa, head of the Palestinian NGOs Network.
Residents say conditions are getting worse. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced by the latest offensive, though others have stayed put despite Israeli evacuation orders, citing fears about security and hunger if they move.
“The situation is becoming more difficult,” said Um Zaki, a mother of five who has stayed in Sabra, Gaza City, describing rising food prices and increasing scarcity. “People who sell things like food...have left to the south,” she said.
Ismail Zayda, a 40-year-old with a week-old baby girl and two young boys displaced from Gaza City to a camp near the coast, said he was making ends meet with canned supplies.
“There are no vegetables at all,” he said.
Gaza City municipality says it also faces a worsening water crisis, with supplies meeting less than 25 percent of daily needs. Fuel shortages and security risks have curtailed water deliveries.
Israel says there is no quantitative limit on food aid entering Gaza and accuses Hamas, which it has been at war with for nearly two years, of stealing aid — accusations the Palestinian militant group denies.
COGAT, the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into the enclave, said humanitarian aid to the northern Gaza Strip continues and that it seeks to expand the capacity of Kissufim crossing into central Gaza threefold.
COGAT said around 300 aid trucks, mostly carrying food, have entered Gaza daily in recent weeks, and that it was coordinating transfer of fuel for desalination facilities and water wells. When asked if Zikim would open, it said the entry of trucks would be facilitated “subject to operational considerations.”
Israel says responsibility for distributing aid in Gaza lies with international agencies, which COGAT said it was trying to help.
However, the WFP said it faced logistical challenges moving food from southern to northern Gaza due to congestion on the sole access road.
OCHA said Israel had denied 40 percent of requested movements to northern Gaza in the 10 days after Zikim’s closure.
“Zikim being closed makes famine, to those who are left behind, even more deadly,” said Ricardo Pires, spokesperson for UN children’s agency UNICEF in Geneva.
“Children are literally wasting away in front of our eyes while the world normalizes their suffering,” he said.
A global hunger monitor confirmed last month that famine had taken hold in Gaza City and was likely to spread, a finding disputed by Israel.
Those needing treatment for malnutrition have few options.
Four health facilities in Gaza City have shut down so far this month, according to the World Health Organization, and the UN says some malnutrition centers have also closed. Hospitals in southern Gaza cannot absorb more patients fleeing.
A spokesperson at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir Al-Balah, Khalil Al-Dakran, told Reuters it was at capacity and lacked medicines, supplies, and fuel.
Mass displacement from the north is also straining food stocks in Khan Younis and Deir Al-Balah in southern Gaza — areas at risk of famine, said Antoine Renard, WFP Palestine country director.