A walkout on day three
Dozens of delegates walked out of the General Assembly hall on Thursday as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his address. The protest came on the third day of the annual debate in New York, where speaker after speaker criticised Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the same hall earlier in the day.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres opened the session on Tuesday by condemning the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel and describing Israel's response as a scale of death and destruction unlike anything he had seen.
A stalled plan, and a quieter channel to Tehran
President Donald Trump used his own address on Tuesday to praise the Security Council for approving his plan for Gaza and for creating a "Board of Peace". The 20-point plan is meant to hand Gaza to a reformed Palestinian Authority, but its timetable has slipped and the authority has not been in the room with Washington the way Iran has.
On the sidelines, US envoy Steve Witkoff met Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi for at least two hours this week, talks that Trump disclosed himself. Iran's president, Masoud Pezeshkian, addressed the assembly on Wednesday. From the podium, Trump said Iran must abandon its nuclear ambitions and what he called its support for terrorism, and he urged other countries to join an economic squeeze on Tehran.
Beyond the Middle East
The agenda also carried climate finance, development and the risks of artificial intelligence. Nepal's prime minister, Balendra Shah, and Bangladesh's prime minister, Tarique Rahman, were among the leaders scheduled to speak on Thursday. Nepal is pressing the assembly over who pays for the glacier flood that killed more than 1,000 people in August.
For all the speeches, the hard questions are unanswered. Who governs Gaza, who pays to rebuild it, and whether the ceasefire holds are now the business of committees rather than podiums. Delegates walked out on Thursday without answers to any of them.