Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Friday (September 22), while addressing the 78th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, held up a map of 'The New Middle East' without Palestine, thereby triggering yet another controversy.
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#Israel #IsraelProtests #BenjaminNetanyahu #Palestine #IsraelPalestineConflict #IsraelMap #UN #NetanyahuUNSpeech
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NewsTranscript
00:00 to show a great blessing, the blessing of a new Middle East."
00:04 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, while addressing the 78th session
00:09 of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, held up a map of the "new Middle East"
00:15 without Palestine, thereby triggering yet another controversy. The "new Middle East"
00:20 illustration showed the West Bank and Gaza within the boundaries of Israel.
00:25 He displayed two maps during his speech. One depicted Israel's geography in 1948,
00:30 accentuating its seclusion in the Middle East without the Allies.
00:34 The second illustration included countries that have peace agreements with Israel,
00:39 which included Egypt, Sudan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Jordan. In his speech,
00:44 he underlined the significance of bolstering ties with Arab countries,
00:47 with a special emphasis on Saudi Arabia. After his address, he took to social media platform X
00:53 and wrote, "The greatest achievement in my life is to fight for you, the Israeli people,
00:58 and for our country. Shabbat shalom." Netanyahu used the map to show a new era of
01:03 peace in the Middle East that would include Palestine. However, his staunch critics say
01:08 that the illustration conveyed the opposite of what was intended.
01:12 The Israeli Prime Minister was widely denounced on social media for holding up the specific
01:16 illustration. The Palestinian Authority's representative to Germany, Laiet Arife,
01:21 shared a post on X saying, "No greater insult to every foundational principle of the UN
01:26 than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a map of Israel that straddles the entire land,
01:31 from the river to the sea." Palestine and its people, while attempting to spin the audience,
01:37 build rhetoric about peace in the region, all the while entrenching the longest ongoing
01:41 belligerent occupation in today's world, he said. But as President Mahmoud Abbas already
01:46 responded yesterday, "Delusional are those who think peace in the region is possible without
01:51 the realization of the full legitimate rights of the Palestinian people," he further added.
01:55 Netanyahu on Friday told the United Nations that his country was on the cusp of normalizing ties
02:00 with Saudi Arabia. Peace talks between Israel and Palestinians broke down more than a decade ago,
02:06 and violence has soared over the past year and a half, with Israel carrying out frequent
02:10 military raids in the occupied West Bank and Palestinians attacking Israelis. Netanyahu's
02:15 government has approved thousands of new settlement homes in the West Bank, which Israel
02:19 captured in the 1967 war and which the Palestinians want for the main part of their future state.
02:24 Netanyahu has often seemed to revel in using the podium of the General Assembly to lambast
02:30 Israel's enemies. He famously held up a picture of a cartoon bomb in 2012 to illustrate Iran's
02:36 advancing uranium enrichment. In 2020, he claimed his bulla was stockpiling explosives near Beirut's
02:42 airport, prompting the Iran-allied militant group to organize an immediate visit by journalists
02:47 who saw heavy machinery but no weapons. The map he held up this year made no reference to the West
02:53 Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem, territories Israel occupied in 1967 that the Palestinians want for
02:58 their future state. The map appeared to show Israel encompassing all three. The chamber was
03:04 largely empty during his address, though there was a group of Netanyahu supporters who clapped
03:08 several times during his speech. Protesters and supporters of Netanyahu demonstrated across the
03:12 street from the UN headquarters.
03:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]