Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas condemned the United Nations in a speech to the General Assembly on Friday, asserting that U.N. bodies had passed “hundreds” of resolutions condemning Israel but had not taken any actions that Palestinian leaders considered sufficient to come to their aid.
Abbas claimed that the nation of Israel is “destroying the two-state solution,” the same plan that Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid proposed on the same stage the day before, and accused Israel of a wide variety of abuses including the alleged demolition of Palestinian homes, the taking of child political prisoners, and “stealing the rain.”
“Israel does not believe in peace. It believes in imposing a status quo by force and by aggression. Therefore, we do not have an Israeli partner anymore to which we can talk,” Abbas claimed, adding that Israel is “destroying the two-state solution.”
Lapid had used the General Assembly on Thursday to announce that he supported the two-state solution.
“An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel’s security, for Israel’s economy and for the future of our children,” Lapid said, contradicting polls showing few Israelis support the plan.
Abbas did acknowledge Lapid’s remarks, but only in minute 39 of what was supposed to be a 15-minute address.
“When we hear something positive, we acknowledge it, and yesterday I listened to the U.S. President Joe Biden and to the Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lavid and to other world leaders,” Abbas said. “I heard them supporting the two-state solution and we are thankful for that. This is of course a positive development.”
“The real test to the seriousness and credibility of this stance … is for the Israeli government to go back to the negotiation table immediately. Tomorrow,” Abbas continued. “To implement the two-state solution … and the Arab peace initiative and to end all the unilateral measures that undermine the two-state solution.”
Prior to the sliver of “positive” commentary, Abbas spent much of the speech condemning the United Nations itself, an institution that spends a disproportionate amount of its time condemning Israel.
“The United Nations and its different organs have adopted hundreds of resolutions on Palestine. None was implemented. Is it possible? Not a single resolution was implemented,” Abbas said, claiming that the United Nations had passed nearly 1,000 resolutions on the Palestinian issue.
“Why, when a resolution is taken here or there, everyone calls for its implementation and calls for implementing the international legitimacy while all of these resolutions were adopted for Palestine and no one cares?” he asked.
Abbas also repeatedly claimed to seek “peace” with Israel while referring to its government as an “apartheid regime” guilty of “over 50 massacres” and to Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, as “our eternal capital and crown jewel.”
Abbas also referred to Palestinians as “the only people on this planet still living under occupation,” a highly disputable declaration omitting the ongoing occupations of East Turkistan and Tibet by communist China and of several regions of Ukraine by Russia, among others.
Abbas concluded with a request for Israel to allow visitations and other privileges to Nasser Abu Hamid, a Palestinian man serving three life sentences plus 50 years for the killing of seven Israeli people.