Mideast conflict not about settlements: PM Netanyahu

President Abbas spoke here an hour ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the U.N. General Assembly. And I would gladly come to speak to the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah. Netanyahu told the United Nations that 160 countries have ties with Israel, “nearly double the number we had when I served here as ambassador some 30 years ago”. The UN, Netanyahu observed, had gone from “moral force” to “moral farce”.

Netanyahu was warmly applauded after saying that “the state of Israel is ready”. In so doing, it hopes countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America that have long spurned Israel at the United Nations will see the benefits of increased cooperation.

“I have one message for you today”. Our common enemies are Iran and ISIS. That debate has become relevant once again this week in the U.S. -Israel sphere, but this time the challenge is not for those on the left but for those on the right. “He noted that Israel wants to share its technology with African countries”, the press release continued.

But Netanyahu said that Haifa, Jaffa and Tel Aviv, all cities in Israel, were “the real settlements they are after”.

Again rejecting any approach to the U.N.to settle the conflict unilaterally or through outside pressure, he insisted, “The road to peace runs through Yerushalayim and Ramallah, not NY”.

While expecting a revolution in attitudes at the UN, Netanyahu indicated that he did not see any such change brewing in the PA.

For four years, from 2009 to 2013, Mr Barak was Mr Netanyahu’s closest ally, serving as his defence minister. In the past, he has threatened to sue the United Kingdom for endorsing the idea of creating a land for the Jews in Palestine. Abbas said that the Security Council failed to take proper punitive measures against Israel for what he said was a land grab by the Jewish state, which was in violation of the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan.

While Mr Abbas castigated “Jewish settlement expansion”, Mr Netanyahu argued that the conflict had never been about the settlements or about establishing a Palestinian state.

Taking the Assembly podium shortly after Abbas said Our hand remains outstretched for making peace but questioned if Israeli leaders desired a true peace free from expansionism, he stressed that the issue of settlements is a real one that can and must be resolved in final status negotiations.

They included Energyia Global Capital, a Jerusalem-based solar and social development enterprise, which said it has already signed deals to deploy $250 million into commercial solar energy fields in Africa in the next 12 months.

“Ali wakes up before school, he goes to practice with a soccer team named after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of a busload of 37 Israelis”.

In repeating his call for direct talks with the Palestinians, Netanyahu rejected any United Nations plan to unilaterally impose a solution. “Imagine your child undergoing this brainwashing”.

There are also the optics of Israel not wanting to appear ungrateful or overly greedy, which would endanger future assistance and public support for Israel in the USA; indeed, the New York Times editorial board last week questioned the deal as negotiated, let alone Graham’s wish for it to be bigger, wondering “whether the ever-increasing aid levels make sense, especially in the face of America’s other pressing domestic and overseas obligations”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking a short time later at the annual gathering of world leaders, derided Abbas for focusing on the declaration and alluded to the possibility of the Palestinians suing Britain for it.

Most of the Palestinians who died were killed carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, Israel says.

“And what about the joke called the U.N. Human Rights Council, which each year condemns Israel more than all the other countries of the world combined”.

“Despite not seeing eye to eye on Iran, this speaks to the strength and power” of the relationship, Dermer said of Obama’s backing of the assistance agreement. Military experts also point to a clause in the deal which means that the slice of American money used to fund weapons development in Israel will be gradually eliminated over six years.

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders Thursday stood poles apart at the UN General Assembly Thursday, clashing over the cause of their decades-old conflict and Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

I’ve seen what Israel has accomplished.