Israel is on the verge of creating a peace with Saudi Arabia that could transform the Middle East as long as Iran’s nuclear threat is eliminated, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the United Nations on Friday morning.
“We are at the cusp of an even more dramatic and historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” Netanyahu said as he stood before a mostly empty plenum during the high-level session that marks the opening of the 78th General Assembly.
“Such a peace will go a long way to ending the Arab-Israeli conflict. It will encourage other Arab states to normalize their relations with Israel. It will enhance the prospects of peace with the Palestinians,” Netanyahu said.
On a global scale, he said, “It will encourage a broader reconciliation between Judaism and Islam between Jerusalem and Mecca between the descendants of Isaac and the descendants of Ishmael,” he added.
Netanyahu, long known for his reliance on props at the United Nations held up two maps of Israel and the region so that the audience could better understand the historic transformation that was about to occur.
The first showed a map from 1948, the year of the creation of the state when it was attacked by all its Arab neighbors.
“Here’s Israel in 1948. It’s a tiny country, isolated, surrounded by a hostile Arab world. In our first seventy years, we made peace [only] with Egypt and Jordan,” Netanyahu said.
Then he held up a modern map that already reflected the change that occurred in 2020 when Israel normalized ties with four of its Arab neighbors under the US-backed Abraham Accords, as well as what could occur if Saudi Arabia joined that circle. He took out a red marker and drew a circle around those countries.
“The whole Middle East changes. We tear down the walls of enmity. We bring the possibility of prosperity and peace to this entire region,” Netanyahu said.
He recalled that he had used the same red marker at the UN plenum when highlighting the danger of a nuclear Iran.
“Today, today I bring this marker to show a great blessing… of a new Middle East, between Israel, Saudi Arabia and our other neighbors. We will not only bring down barriers between Israel and our neighbors.”
Netanyahu spoke at the end of a week of intense diplomatic activity that marked his first trip to the United States since taking office at the end of December.
He arrived as US efforts were underway to forge a quadrilateral deal that would center on an agreement between Washington and Riyadh that would include a normalization deal between that Kingdom and Israel. In exchange, Israel would be expected to make concessions to the Palestinians.
Bloomberg has also reported that the US is considering a security pact with Israel as part of the deal.
The Saudi deal has been a major focus of Netanyahu’s trip, including his conversation on Wednesday with US President Joe Biden.
In an interview with Fox News, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that his country and Israel were closer than ever to a deal and that the engagement on the matter was serious.
In his UN address, Netanyahu said “I believe we can achieve peace with Saudi Arabia with the leadership of President Biden.”
He added that, “Working together with the leadership of Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman, we can shape a future of great blessings for all our peoples.”
Netanyahu told UNGA Israel must be able to forge relations with Arab states irrespective of Palestinian conflict. “We must not give the Palestinians a veto over Israel’s relations with Arab states.”
Netanyahu: Palestinians must stop antisemitism, payment to terrorists
Netanyahu said that for peace to prevail, the Palestinians must stop antisemitism and the payment to Palestinian terrorists. Abbas he noted had tried to say that Hitler was not antisemitic. “You can’t make this stuff up,” he said.
Netanyahu said he believes that Israel can achieve peace with the leadership of Biden and Saudi Arabian crown prince Mohammed bin Salman to shape a great future for all our people.
Netanyahu said that Iran is “the fly in the ointment” when it comes to regional peace. The regime’s oppression is largely met with international indifference.
As long as he is in power, he will do everything he can to ensure that Iran will never obtain nuclear weapons. He called for the restoration of international sanctions and the presence of a credible military threat.
Netanyahu also told UNGA that artificial intelligence is a blessing but can also be a curse, with the potential for AI-driven wars that could achieve an unimaginable scale. Once the stuff of science fiction, machines could eventually control humans.
Netanyahu tells UNGA that an AI utopia must not be allowed to turn into a dystopia.
“We could expand the heavens as never before and expand humanity beyond this planet.” Just as Israeli tech provided the world with innovation, Israeli AI will help humanity.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu making final corrections to his speech, just before taking the stage at the UN General Assembly for the 12th time as an Israeli leader. pic.twitter.com/gOaf1Nm9gh
— Tovah Lazaroff (@tovahlazaroff) September 22, 2023
Following Netanyahu’s speech, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said there is “flagrant hypocrisy” in dealing with the Palestinians and called on the international community to speak out about human rights abuses against them.
Netanyahu’s trip to the United States so far
Netanyahu, who met with Tesla and X owner Elon Musk in California before departing for the East Coast, was met with resistance during his visit to NYC, as Jewish communities across the US gathered in Times Square to express their unwavering support for the Israeli leader, while other groups demonstrated their opposition to his policies.
Netanyahu has thus far met with a host of world leaders including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Joe Biden, in a crucial meeting held on the sidelines of UNGA.
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