Benjamin Netanyahu Invites Mahmoud Abbas To Address Israel’s Knesset
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed “the spirit of the Arab Peace Initiative” and invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to the Knesset in his General Assembly speech on Thursday.
“The UN began as moral force, and has become a moral farce,” Netanyahu said. He said that while the United Nations denounces Israel, the United States supports Israel.
More and more nations around the world see Israel as a partner, the prime minister said. ”Everything will change and a lot sooner than you think,” he said.
The attitudes toward Israel are changing in the Arab world, Netanyahu says, which sees Israel as an ally against Iran. ”The biggest change is taking place in Arab world. For first time in my lifetime many other states recognize us not as the enemy but as an ally.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the 71st session of UN General Assembly in New York on September 22, 2016.Jewel Samad, AFP
Speaking after Abbas, who in his speech said that he intends to present the UN Security Council a resolution against the Israeli settlements, Netanyahu said that “the real settlements the [Palestinians] are after are Tel Aviv and Haifa.”
Netanyahu said that the Palestinians still refuse to recognize Israeli as the nation-state of the Jewish people “in any boundry.”
“We will never negotiate our right to the one and only Jewish state,” he said.
In his address, Netanyahu invited Abbas to speak at the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem, and said he would gladly speak at the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah.
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