The 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly opened last month in an international environment of insecurity, instability, wars, and armed conflicts around the world that number 110 according to some knowledgeable sources.

The wars in Gaza and Ukraine were the main and most important questions before the world leaders who gathered in New York City to tackle the pressing issues pertaining to international peace and security. The 79th Session’s General Debate coincided with Israel opening another front in Lebanon with a series of targeted assassinations that began with assassinating Hassan Nasrallah, the former secretary-general of Hizbullah, and launching a ground invasion of southern Lebanon with intensive bombardments throughout the country.

The Israeli army described the ground incursion as “limited, localised, and targeted raids”. Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant had told Israeli troops along the border between Israel and Lebanon that the assassination of Nasrallah was “a very important step, but it is not everything.”

A year ago, world leaders who delivered remarks about the Middle East before the 78th Session of the UN General Assembly underscored the importance of the two-state solution to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. US President Joe Biden promised last year that his administration would “continue to work tirelessly to support a just and lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians” in establishing two states for two peoples. He also spoke of the administration’s efforts to “build a more sustainable, integrated Middle East.”

However, then 7 October 2023 happened. An earthquake shook a decaying regional order that has either failed the national aspirations of the Palestinian people or ignored them completely. A different Middle East is now being shaped.

In his remarks at the UN this year, Biden said that the US is working to bring a “greater measure of peace and stability to the Middle East.” He added that a full-scale war in the region “is not in anyone’s interest” and that a diplomatic solution is “still possible,” stressing that this represents “the only path to lasting peace and security”.

On the margins of the General Assembly meeting this year, Biden and President Emmanuel Macron of France released a joint statement on 26 September in which they called for a 21-day temporary ceasefire to give diplomacy a chance to succeed in stopping the ongoing escalation in Lebanon.

Although the Israelis said they would be willing to go along with the US-French proposal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had something else in mind — a land “incursion” into Southern Lebanon that it is difficult to predict how it will unfold. I doubt if the Israeli leaders have an answer to this question either.

The US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, the EU, Japan, and Australia, in addition to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, also issued a joint statement on 25 September calling for an immediate ceasefire across the Lebanese-Israeli border, a measure that would give space to diplomacy, and a path towards a diplomatic settlement consistent with two UN Security Council resolutions, namely Resolution 1701 of August 2006 concerning Lebanon and Resolution 2735 regarding a ceasefire in Gaza.

To his credit, Biden brought up the settler violence against “innocent Palestinians in the West Bank” in his speech, saying that “conditions must be set” for a better future, including “a two-state solution… where Israel enjoys security and peace and full recognition and normalised relations with all its neighbours” and where the Palestinians live in “security, dignity, and self- determination in a state of their own.”

 It is noteworthy that Biden linked this hope with Iran. He said he believed that progress towards peace “will put us in a stronger position to deal with the ongoing threat posed by Iran” and that the international community must “ensure that Iran will never ever obtain a nuclear weapon.”

While Biden spoke about the prospects for peace and security in the Middle East, Netanyahu, who addressed the General Assembly three days later, ignored completely the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and boasted instead that he had “prevented the initiation of a Palestinian state, because today everyone understands what that Palestinian state could have been … now that we have seen the small Palestinian state in Gaza, everyone understands what would have happened if we had succumbed to international pressure and enabled such a state in the West Bank.”

Known for his theatrical gestures, Netanyahu then showed two maps. One could be described as the “curse”, and the second could be called the “blessing”, he said.

As could have been guessed, the first map was about Iran. Netanyahu said it was a “map of an arc of terror that Iran has created and imposed from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.”

The second map, which he described as a “map of blessing”, showed a land bridge formed by Israel and countries he called the partners of Israel linking Asia to Europe. Across this bridge, rail lines, energy pipelines, and fibre-optic cables would be extended, Netanyahu said.

A few days later on 1 October, Iran launched its second missile attack against Israel in retaliation for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the former chairman of Hamas, and of Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah. Israel vowed to retaliate, and according to Israeli sources the Israeli strikes would be “significant”.

Biden told reporters on 4 October that the US believed that the most important step was to try to mobilise the world and US allies to aid in the de-escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran.

Philemon Yang, the president of the General Assembly, closed the General Debate on 30 September with a powerful reminder of the various conflicts around the world. He said that the world had seen an “extremely dramatic escalation of the violence between Israel and Hizbullah” and that the “escalation carried the risk of igniting war in the entire Middle East.”

The war in Ukraine was also centre stage in the remarks made before the General Assembly. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to New York with a “plan for victory” that aimed at obtaining the green light from the US administration to use long-range US missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia on the pretext that this would hasten the resumption of peace talks with the Russians.

He failed to convince the White House, which does not want to escalate the war with Russia in an election year in the United States. All the Western leaders who took to the podium of the General Assembly lent their unwavering support to Ukraine and its right to defend its territorial integrity while lambasting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The theme of the 79th Session of the UN General Assembly was “unity in diversity for the advancement of peace, sustainable development, and human dignity for everyone, everywhere.” It is a worthy theme but judging by the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine and armed conflicts such as that in Sudan, the UN and the international community as a whole still have a long way to go in achieving these objectives.

The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly