In a rambling address to the United Nations General Assembly on its 80th anniversary, Donald Trump took the opportunity to berate both multilateralism and the organisation itself. Not least for its failure to help him stop the seven wars he claims singlehandedly to have ended. “Sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any on them,” Trump said. The US has massively cut funding to the UN and many of its programmes.
In a paean to US exceptionalism, the president laid about him with abandon, blaming his predecessor Joe Biden for the state of the US and the world he had inherited, and had now put right in eight months. He blamed European countries for the “disaster” of mass migration and for surrendering to the “con job” of the green agenda.
And he upbraided the 150 UN member states that have now recognised Palestine as a state for “rewarding” Hamas. His concern, he said, was for the immediate release of all the remaining hostages. No reference was made to the plight of Palestinians under constant bombardment or to the widely feared prospect of Israeli annexing the West Bank.
There was not a word either about the idea of a path to Palestinian statehood, a longstanding international aspiration expressed in 1947 in the Partition Plan for Palestine under the auspices of the then newly founded UN.
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A 140-strong alliance of states has backed France and Saudi Arabia’s recognition initiative, representing a determination that the aspiration to a two-state solution should remain alive and ultimately viable. Importantly, the initiative makes clear, with the unambiguous support of neighbouring Arab states, that Hamas must not be part of that future.
Both Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu have denounced recognition as “reward for terrorism”. But what acknowledgment of, or concession to, Palestinian aspirations for statehood – or even relief from remorseless attack – would be acceptable to Israel? Its agenda remains implacable: no concessions. The Israeli government’s plans for annexation are expected within days.
Trump’s speech, with its hyperbole, untruths and omissions, was a sorry contrast to those a few minutes earlier from UN secretary general António Guterres and Brazilian president Lula da Silva. The latter pointedly warned of the clear parallel between the threat to the multilateralism that has kept the peace since 1945, and the threats to democracy from the far right. Guterres echoed the sentiment with a rallying cry to member states to understand that “we are all in this together”. He spoke of the UN and the world community at a critical crossroads, politically and economically. The weakness of the UN, he argued, reflected a failure of political will on the part of the member states.
