Netanyahu's lightning trip to New York to defend Israel and strengthen himself at home

JerusalemBenjamin Netanyahu will arrive this Thursday in New York to deliver one of the most delicate speeches of his career before the United Nations General Assembly. It will be a lightning visit: the Israeli prime minister plans to arrive in the United States on the same day as his intervention and return to Israel a few hours later. Unlike other years, no meeting with the US president, Donald Trump, is scheduled.

The brevity of the trip is significant. Netanyahu is not arriving in New York to deploy an intense diplomatic agenda, as he has done since his first participation in the General Assembly in 1998, but rather will occupy the UN podium to address three issues that dominate the international debate: the war with Iran, the offensive in Gaza, and the future of a region that in recent months has chained together several war fronts and in which Israel's international image has deteriorated sharply.

Iran and Gaza, at the center of the speech

Iran, which for fifteen years has occupied a central place in Netanyahu's speeches at the UN, will once again play a prominent role. According to the Israeli press, the leader will speak about the confrontation with Tehran as an essential security issue for Israel and will again pose regime change in the Persian country as vital. According to the media outlet Channel 12, he could also present new information about Iranian efforts to recover nuclear capabilities and resort, as he has done on other occasions, to charts and visual material to reinforce the message.

The international context gives him arguments to do so. The war between the United States, Israel, and Iran, which began on February 28, is one of the major issues of the Assembly, and Trump has already dedicated a significant part of his speech to Tehran, warning that he could opt for an agreement or to increase attacks against the Islamic Republic again.

Gaza will surely be the other major front of the speech. Netanyahu will predictably defend Israel's right to defend itself and will justify the actions of the Israeli army in the face of international accusations that in recent days have gained strength following the documentary GAZA. He himself has already anticipated what the tone will be. In a video released this week following the dispute with the mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, who has accused him of being "the architect of a genocide in Gaza", Netanyahu has assured that he would go to the UN to explain "the truth" about the Israeli soldiers and to respond to his critics.

An appearance also intended for Israel

Netanyahu's speech cannot be detached from Israel's internal political context: the legislative elections on October 27th. The timing of the speech, around nine in the evening in the country, places it in the middle of prime time. This turns the General Assembly into a stage with a dual scope: the prime minister will speak before the representatives of the 193 UN countries, but the speech will also be followed in Israel, in the midst of the election campaign.

Several media outlets in the country suggest that the intervention may serve to project the image of a prime minister who defends Israel against a world he considers hostile. The speech before the UN, according to this reading, will be a battle to preserve his main political asset: the image of "Mr. Security". In this framework, the leader will have to try to convince voters that he is the politician best prepared to guarantee Israel's security after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

At home, however, he faces significant opposition from sectors of public opinion that reproach him for not having prevented the Palestinian group's attacks, the refusal to establish a state commission of inquiry into the attacks, and his coalition's insistent refusal to impose mandatory military service on the ultra-Orthodox, among other issues. The latest polls offer a complicated electoral picture for Netanyahu's bloc, which would fall below the 61 seats necessary to form a government.

In this context, Trump appears. In previous campaigns, Netanyahu has made a banner of his relationship with the American president to present himself as a leader with a capacity for access to Washington superior to that of his rivals. This time, however, everything points to there being no joint photograph.

The visit will be heavily secured. In New York, protests against Netanyahu are expected, but also demonstrations of support for Israel. Inside the General Assembly, meanwhile, there is anticipation to see how the different delegations will react. Last year, hundreds of diplomats left the room when the Israeli prime minister began his speech, in one of the most visible displays of the rejection that his presence at the UN generates.