Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas delivered prerecorded remarks to the UN General Assembly on Thursday from his office in Ramallah. It marked the second consecutive year that Abbas and other senior Palestinian officials were denied visas to attend the meeting in person by the United States.
“The Palestinian people face one of the most dangerous periods in their history,” Abbas said, citing Israel’s longstanding military occupation of the West Bank and the war in Gaza. He accused Israel of targeting “all of the basic necessities of life.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to address the assembly in person later that afternoon. While Abbas spoke, the seats occupied by the Israeli delegation remained vacant.
Abbas again urged the international community to take stronger action and speak out more forcefully against Israel.
“How much longer will some states remain silent in the face of Israel or supply it with the weapons it uses against our people? The world has witnessed the tremendous cost in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank,” Abbas said. “What is the international community waiting for in order to protect the Palestinian people?”
Although negotiations have been stalled for years, Abbas called on world powers to revive a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Netanyahu has said no Palestinian state will be established while he remains Israel’s leader and has argued that the Palestinian Authority is not a partner for peace.
The international community has supported President Donald Trump’s plan to place Gaza under a group of nonpartisan administrators known as the Board of Peace. Abbas, however, said Gaza could not remain politically separated from the West Bank and East Jerusalem indefinitely.
He called for the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the West Bank to be governed by “one state, one government, one law and one legitimate entity authorised to bear arms.”
Abbas, now 90, has led the Palestinian Authority since 2005. The internationally recognised body represents the Palestinian people, but Abbas’s popularity has declined amid allegations of corruption and the sometimes violent expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
During Abbas’s leadership, a majority of UN member states have recognised Palestine as a country. However, these largely symbolic measures have not altered Israel’s decades-long military occupation. During the Gaza war, Abbas and the authority have been largely excluded from negotiations over the territory’s future, which are being overseen by the Board of Peace.
Established through a series of peace agreements with Israel in the 1990s, the Palestinian Authority administers semiautonomous areas of the West Bank and depends heavily on foreign aid. It is internationally recognised as the representative of the Palestinian people.
The authority lost control of Gaza after Hamas won parliamentary elections in 2006 and subsequently seized power by force. Abbas was elected in 2005 to what was intended to be a four-year term. No presidential or legislative elections have been held since 2006.
Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem during the 1967 war, and Palestinians seek both territories for a future state. Palestinians and much of the international community consider Israeli settlements illegal and an obstacle to establishing a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.
Abbas recorded his remarks on Wednesday.
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