During the last two weeks the trip to the UN General Assembly in New York of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahuwith his wife, confidant and political advisor, was in question. Analysts wondered if they would really travel with the country as it is. With a year-long war in Gaza against Hamas, an equally long although undeclared one against Hezbollah in the north, with missiles coming from Yemen and also from Iraq, with the West Bank boiling.
And he traveled.
In his speech, from which several diplomats from various countries were absent in a gesture of disdain, Netanyahu spoke of Israel wanting peace. He also accused the UN of laziness, said that while Israel was protecting itself against terrorism from Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, it was also protecting the rest of the Western world, and showed two maps of the Middle East. One with an expanding Iran over Syria and Iraq, all in black, on which was read “the curse” and, in contrast, a map with Israel in light green, as well as its potential friends Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where it read “the blessing.”
This may have been the last thing he saw. Hasan Nasrallahthe secretary general of Hezbollah, in his underground bunker in the Dahiyeh neighborhood of Beirut. Because just minutes after Netanyahu concluded his speech, a massive Israeli airstrike rocked the Lebanese capital.
An Israeli official on condition of anonymity told the newspaper The Telegraph that Netanyahu’s decision to make the trip to New York and press ahead with his planned plans was a trick to make Nasrallah believe that Israel would not attack him while the prime minister was abroad.
After the shock of the huge explosion in Beirut and the uncertainty of the scope of the attack, Josep Borrellchancellor of the European Union, regretted that no one could stop Netanyahu. And while Western diplomacy tries to prevent the outbreak of an all-out war between Israel and the world’s best-armed non-state organization, backed by Iran and allied to Hamas, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchisaid that Israel had used “several 2,200-kilogram bunker-busting missiles” given to it by the United States to attack residential areas of Beirut. However, a Pentagon spokesman was quick to say shortly after the attack that the US had not received any prior warning about the bombing.
Netanyahu told the United Nations on Friday that Hezbollah “has tentacles that reach across all continents. “It has murdered more Americans and more French than any other group except Bin Laden (…) And it has attacked Israel viciously for the last 20 years.” “Last year, without any provocation,” the Israeli president continued, Hezbollah attacks “turned vibrant cities in northern Israel into ghost towns (…) Israel has been tolerating this intolerable situation for almost a year. Well, I came here today to say that enough is enough.
Shortly before giving his speech, Netanyahu had approved the attack against Nasrallah from his New York hotel room where he was staying, according to information provided by his own government. It was the most decisive coup and the one most sought by the Israeli prime minister.