Mass UN walkout over Gaza

ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu castigated his “weak-kneed” critics and vowed to continue fighting Israel's enemies until they were “gone” in a defiant speech at the UN on Friday that was simultaneously broadcast into the Gaza Strip by speakers at the direction of the Israeli prime minister.

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PRO-PALESTINE protesters march to the UN headquarters in New York City where Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a speech on Friday, in which he lashed out at critics of Israel over its war in Gaza.

(AFP)

“Many of those who wage war on Israel today will be gone tomorrow,” he said, as throngs of diplomats walked out in protest of his address in the cavernous UN General Assembly hall.

The annual gathering of world leaders in New York began with prominent Western powers including France, Britain and Canada recognising a Palestinian state and calling for an end to Israel’s military campaign. Those pleas coincided with intensifying Israeli attacks inside Gaza City and the collapse of the area’s already beleaguered healthcare system, which have sent medics and patients fleeing.

Netanyahu claimed that the “final remnants of Hamas are holed up in Gaza City” and that “Israel must finish the job”, an appeal for more time he has reiterated at several phases of the nearly two-year war. “Israel has had to confront a seven-front war against barbarism,” Netanyahu said, as he boasted of the Israeli military's decimation of foes in Iran, Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza.

Over 100 diplomats from more than 50 countries staged a mass walkout as Netanyahu entered the assembly hall, crowding into aisles to file out through the room’s exits. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s supporters cheered the prime minister from the assembly room’s upper gallery, and some broke out into song.

Before the speech began, Netanyahu’s office said that the prime minister had ordered the placement of “loudspeakers on trucks” on the Israeli side of the Gaza border and that the Israel Defense Forces had “taken control of the phones” in Gaza so that Palestinians could hear the “historic speech”.