Netanyahu and Abbas Address the UN on the Same Day, Apart
Benjamin Netanyahu was due to address the United Nations General Assembly on 24 September 2026, during a New York visit expected to last about 12 hours. His speech was tentatively scheduled for 2pm ET. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was to address delegates the same day by video from Ramallah.
Abbas spoke by video link shown in the General Assembly Hall, a prerecorded address from his office in Ramallah, according to France 24. He condemned Israel's policies in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a "malicious colonial plan" to establish a "Greater Israel" and erase the Palestinian presence. He said the Israeli government "now threatens the very life and existence of the Palestinian people in their homeland." He added: "Do not allow another Nakba and further massacres like those of 1948 to continue taking place," referring to the expulsion of Palestinians upon the founding of Israel. Nakba is an Arabic term often translated as catastrophe.
Abbas did not travel to New York. For the second year in a row, the US State Department denied visas to Abbas and the Palestinian Authority delegation, arguing they had failed to meet commitments to seek peace with Israel. Abbas said his delegation "rejects these unlawful punitive measures, as well as the accusations and justifications on which they were based." He said preventing the Palestinian delegation from reaching UN headquarters is inconsistent with US obligations as the host country, which must generally allow delegates access to the UN.
According to The Guardian, Netanyahu was expected to give a defiant speech rejecting criticism over Israel's war in Gaza and settlement expansion in the West Bank, the building of Israeli communities on disputed land. In a brief video statement before departure, reported by Reuters, he said he was coming to the UN to tell the truth about Israel's actions and its heroic soldiers. No meeting with Donald Trump was expected during the brief visit. Trump was in Washington to host Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Netanyahu said he needed to return to Israel quickly because of the election campaign and the holiday of Sukkot beginning on Friday. An Israeli government page on 22 September 2026 had put the address two days out, and the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism framed its communications around the debate as "The UN's Lie Industry," according to government postings. A government monitoring report dated 24 September 2026 also documented a scheduled pro-Palestinian protest targeting the address, and Gov.il lists a publication titled "Prime Minister Netanyahu's UN General Assembly Address - September 24, 2026." The UN's official General Debate site documents the Hall proceedings for 24 September 2026 at UN Headquarters.
The broader context here is procedural as much as rhetorical. The Assembly, the UN's yearly gathering of leaders, often works like parallel press conferences aimed at audiences at home as well as in the hall. The visa denial sharpens that dynamic. It raises a host-country question that will outlast this debate. For diplomacy, the immediate test is whether these competing addresses leave mediators with more or less room once delegations leave New York.
