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| Netanyahu Will Address U.N., but Focus May Be Healing Rift With U.S. | Netanyahu Will Address U.N., but Focus May Be Healing Rift With U.S. |
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| Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, looks at what message he has and how it might be received. | Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, Jodi Rudoren, looks at what message he has and how it might be received. |
| Mr. Netanyahu has generally made the Iranian nuclear program a focal point of his addresses at the United Nations, famously holding a poster of a cartoon bomb and drawing a red line through it while on the podium in 2012. But with the Obama administration and five other world powers having concluded an agreement with Tehran that Israel bitterly opposed, Mr. Netanyahu will be wary of isolating himself even further by continuing to rail against it. With a November meeting set between him and President Obama, it is time to move on, and the United Nations speech is a high-profile chance to show (or pretend) that he has. | Mr. Netanyahu has generally made the Iranian nuclear program a focal point of his addresses at the United Nations, famously holding a poster of a cartoon bomb and drawing a red line through it while on the podium in 2012. But with the Obama administration and five other world powers having concluded an agreement with Tehran that Israel bitterly opposed, Mr. Netanyahu will be wary of isolating himself even further by continuing to rail against it. With a November meeting set between him and President Obama, it is time to move on, and the United Nations speech is a high-profile chance to show (or pretend) that he has. |
| That may be too much to ask. Lately, Mr. Netanyahu has emphasized Iran’s role in the region, as a sponsor of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, and a supporter of the Syrian military; the Houthi rebels in Yemen; and Hamas, the Palestinian Islamists who control Gaza. He is likely to speak broadly of Islamic extremism and terrorism, comparing Iran to the Islamic State as the antithesis of the modern, democratic, civilized world. | |
| Mr. Netanyahu may well make the Palestinian issue the primary focus of his speech, though he may not engage directly with the declaration made on Wednesday by his counterpart, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, that the Palestinians will no longer be bound by agreements with Israel if the country violates them. Mr. Netanyahu’s government insists it is upholding the Oslo peace accords and other agreements. | |
| Instead, Mr. Netanyahu will most likely rail against Mr. Abbas’s comments regarding the contested holy site in the Old City of Jerusalem, which Jews revere as the Temple Mount and Muslims the Noble Sanctuary. Mr. Abbas claimed Israel was trying to change the longstanding status quo prohibiting non-Muslim prayer at the site and even divide it. Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly said he was doing no such thing and accused Mr. Abbas of inciting violence there. | |
| The prime minister will also undoubtedly reiterate his readiness to restart peace talks with his Palestinian counterpart anywhere, anytime. Mr. Netanyahu insists that these talks have no preconditions — but that itself is a condition he knows the Palestinian leader will not accept. (Mr. Abbas has insisted that he will resume negotiations only if Israel releases long-serving Palestinian prisoners, halts construction of West Bank settlements and bases the talks on the pre-1967 lines that divided Israel from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.) | |
| Still, Mr. Netanyahu’s most important audience is, in many ways, Mr. Obama, who has expressed deep skepticism about the prime minister’s commitment to the two-state solution and is still deciding whether and how to press again for progress on Middle East peace. With the Iran deal behind them, both Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu are looking to repair their wrecked public relationship. Mr. Netanyahu’s speech regarding the Palestinian issue is an important step in that process, whether real or made for TV. |