From the Liveblog of
Monday, October 26, 2020
Erdan denounces UN Security Council for ‘muted response’ to normalization deals
The United Nations Security Council is holding a meeting on the situation in the Middle East, with Israel’s UN envoy Gilad Erdan chiding the body for staying relatively silent on the Jewish state’s recent normalization deals with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan.
“I have witnessed a jarring dissonance between what this council chooses to focus on and what’s actually happening in the Middle East,” Erdan tells the council, in a meeting held via video conference.
In his address, Erdan calls on the council to “break free from old paradigms and address the new reality in the Middle East.”
He addresses the Security Council’s “muted response” to the recent agreements and its “apparent disregard for other factors that jeopardize the stability and security of the region.”
He mocks recent talk of potential Palestinian elections, which haven’t been held since 2004.
“Israel has held more elections in a year than the Palestinians have held in the last fifteen,” he says. Israel held three national elections between April 2019 and March 2020 amid a severe political crisis.
Erdan speaks after the PA’s foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki and the UN’s special envoy on Middle East peace Nickolai Mladenov.
The Palestinian representative’s address was interrupted by none other than Erdan, who didn’t realize his microphone was on and could be heard loudly preparing for his subsequent speech.
