Netanyahu rejects ceasefire proposal in Lebanon: ‘As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice’

A belligerent Benjamin Netanyahu has torn up the weak and contradictory signals that Israel was willing to accept a U.S. and French ceasefire proposal to stop the escalation of the conflict in Lebanon. “As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice,” he stated. The Israeli prime minister’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly, interrupted several times by boos and discreet applause to the point that the diplomat presiding the session had to call the room to order twice, was a repetition of his government’s arguments throughout the Gaza war and his defiant tone was the same as that displayed in his message to the U.S. Congress at the end of July.

It was a rhetorical and geopolitical flight forward, in a forum where most countries have demanded a ceasefire in Gaza, but also in Lebanon. Netanyahu lashed out in several directions: against the legitimacy of institutions such as the UN and the International Criminal Court, whose accusations against Israel he termed “absurd,” and the forum that hosted him, which he accused of being anti-Semitic. Netanyahu assured that the war against Hezbollah would not stop until the 60,000 displaced Israelis from the north of the country could return to their homes. There were more protagonists in his speech than just Hamas, which has become almost a footnote in the face of his frequent references to Iran as a global sponsor of terrorism and the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli demonstrations that have swept the world since the war in Gaza began.

Although the Israeli prime minister’s office had in recent hours given signals of considering the ceasefire proposal to halt its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Netanyahu’s tone on the speaker’s platform silenced them. Brandishing a school-style map, simple and striking, which in his opinion exemplarily reflects the only two options for the future that the Middle East, and by extension the world, has — the axis of good and the axis of evil, in his words, literally, that of “blessing” versus that of “curse” — he again leveled accusations against Iran. “On the one hand, a bright blessing — a future of hope. On the other hand, a dark future of despair,” he said, accusing Tehran of trying to “impose its radicalism well beyond the Middle East.”

“I didn’t intend to come here this year [to the UN]. My country is at war, fighting for its life. But after I heard the lies and slanders leveled at my country by many of the speakers at this podium, I decided to come here and set the record straight [...] And here’s the truth: Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. Israel has made peace and will make peace again. Yet we face savage enemies who seek our annihilation, and we must defend ourselves against them,” an emboldened Netanyahu said to open his speech, despite the notable absence of numerous delegations and resounding boos. Among those not in attendance were diplomats from Saudi Arabia, to whom Netanyahu has extended his hand to, “with the help of the U.S.,” advance his particular regional map after the alliances forged by his country with other Arab nations in recent years.

As he has done since the beginning of the Gaza war, Netanyahu lashed out at the United Nations itself, accusing it of blatant anti-Semitism and double standards that condemn Israel exponentially more than “the entire world combined,” alluding to the resolutions issued by the Security Council and the Assembly. “All the hostility directed at Israel this year — it’s not about Gaza; it’s about Israel. It’s always been about Israel. About Israel’s very existence. And I say to you, until Israel, until the Jewish state, is treated like other nations, until this antisemitic swamp is drained, the UN will be viewed by fair-minded people everywhere as nothing more than a contemptuous farce,” the Israeli prime minister said, calling the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court “pure antisemitism.”

Much of his speech was directed against Iran, as was his delivery to the U.S. Congress earlier in the year. Netanyahu boasted that Israeli actions — a veiled but clear allusion to the attacks on several scientists — had succeeded in delaying Tehran’s nuclear program “by at least 10 years,” but that was not enough, he said, to avert what he presented as a threat not only to the region, but to the world. “I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: If you strike us, we will strike you. There is no place — there is no place in Iran — that the long arm of Israel cannot reach. And that’s true of the entire Middle East […] And I have another message for this assembly and for the world outside this hall: We are winning. As Israel defends itself against Iran in this seven-front war, the lines separating the blessing and the curse could not be more clear.”

Netanyahu’s long-awaited speech at the UN, especially given its predictable allusions to the escalation of the conflict in Lebanon, ended almost at the same time as the first clouds of smoke appeared in the sky over Beirut from the impact of Israeli strikes. Netanyahu made it clear: not a single mention of the truce advocated by the U.S. and France; on the contrary, a resounding no to any form of compromise with Hezbollah. “Enough is enough,” he said. “We won’t rest until our citizens can return safely to their homes. We will not accept a terror army perched on our northern border, able to perpetrate another October 7-style massacre. As long as Hezbollah chooses the path of war, Israel has no choice. And Israel has every right to remove this threat and return our citizens to their homes safely, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

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