Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged Israel will fight until “total victory” in its continuing war on Gaza and promised to continue attacks on the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, as hopes faded for a ceasefire that could head off an all-out regional war.
Several delegations walked out as Netanyahu approached the lectern to speak while supporters in the gallery cheered.
“I didn’t intend to come here this year. My country is at war fighting for its life,” Netanyahu said on Friday.
“But after I heard the lies and slanders levelled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight.”
Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed more than 41,500 Palestinians and wounded more than 96,000 others since October 7, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
More than half of those killed were women and children, including about 1,300 children under the age of two.
Israel launched the assault on Gaza in response to a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, which killed at least 1,139 people, mostly civilians, according to an Al Jazeera tally based on official Israeli figures, with about 250 others seized as captives.
Israeli leader told the 193-member assembly that the Palestinian group Hamas, which governs Gaza, should have no role in the reconstruction of the territory.
“If Hamas stays in power, it will regroup … and attack Israel again and again and again … So Hamas has got to go,” he told the United Nations General Assembly on Friday.
The United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, has been trying unsuccessfully to reach a ceasefire that would end the war and secure the release of the captives.
“This war can come to an end now. All that has to happen is for Hamas to surrender, lay down its arms and release all the hostages,” Netanyahu said.
“But if they don’t – if they don’t – we will fight until we achieve total victory. Total victory. There is no substitute for it. “
He said Israeli forces have destroyed “90 percent” of Hamas’s rockets and killed or captured half of its forces.
Hamas accused Netanyahu of telling “blatant lies” in his speech.
Netanyahu “continued his series of blatant lies and escalated his threats against the peoples of the region, while … expanding his circle of crimes to include our people in Lebanon”, a statement from the Palestinian group said.
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said the US government gave Israel the greenlight to use self-defence as a rationale for its war on Gaza by drawing a parallel between Hamas’s October 7 attack and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“It then went on to shield it, to arm it, to finance it and to defend it at the United Nations and that’s why we need to remember that Netanyahu has the arrogance to come to the UN and lecture the world, because the US supports him, a war criminal,” he said.
‘Enough is enough’
The prime minister also told world leaders that his nation will “continue degrading” the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah until it achieves its goals along the Israel-Lebanon border.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire almost every day since October 8, when the Iran-aligned group fired rockets at Israel in what it says was an act of solidarity with Palestinians under attack in Gaza.
Most of those exchanges have been contained to the region around the Israel-Lebanon border. But Israel’s military dramatically escalated its attacks on Hezbollah in recent days, killing more than 600 people in Lebanon since Monday in a wave of air raids, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Health.
“Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their home safely. And that’s exactly what we’re doing … we’ll continue degrading Hezbollah until all our objectives are met,” Netanyahu said.
“Just imagine if terrorists turned El Paso and San Diego into ghost towns … How long would the American government tolerate that?” he said, shaking his fist in emphasis.
“Yet Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for almost a year. Well, I’ve come here today to say: Enough is enough.”
Israel and the Lebanese group have driven tens of thousands of people from their homes on both sides of the border.
Late Wednesday, the US, France and other allies jointly called for an “immediate” 21-day ceasefire to allow for negotiations as fears grow that the violent escalation in recent days – following 11 months of cross-border exchange of fire – could escalate into an all-out war.
The United Nations has said that more than 90,000 people have been displaced since Monday in Lebanon.
The two speakers who preceded Netanyahu on Friday each made a point of criticising Israel’s war on Gaza. “Mr Netanyahu, stop this war now,” Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said as he closed his remarks, pounding the podium.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif also denounced the Israeli assault on Gaza. “This is not just a conflict. This is systematic slaughter of innocent people of Palestine,” he said.