Netanyahu lands in New York to address UN General Assembly, won’t meet Trump

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed Thursday morning in New York City, where he was scheduled to deliver his speech at the United Nations General Assembly in the early afternoon, local time.

His Wing of Zion plane took off overnight from an airbase in southern Israel for security reasons. The Prime Minister’s Office did not release a video of his departure.

The plane touched down at Stewart International Airport in the Hudson Valley, 60 miles (97 km) north of Manhattan.

Netanyahu and his wife Sara were met by Israel’s Consul General in New York, Ofir Akunis, and IDF and US military personnel.

Netanyahu is set to speak at the UN General Assembly at around 9 p.m. Israel time (2 p.m. Eastern Time) and meet with several world leaders during his trip, which will last for only a few hours on the ground, his office said.

His office did not list in its statement any meetings with US officials, including President Donald Trump.

Netanyahu is set to meet with the presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama, and Ethiopia; the vice president of Colombia; and the prime ministers of Greece, Slovenia, and Papua New Guinea.

Netanyahu’s office said many world leaders wanted to meet with him, but he could not meet them all because he is scheduled to return to Israel before the start of the Sukkot festival on Friday evening.

His speech is expected to focus, among other issues, on Iran, West Bank terrorism and the Gaza war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel.

Neria Leiter, the son of Israel’s ambassador to the US, was critically wounded in a  West Bank car-ramming attack on Wednesday, and is hospitalized in serious condition. Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, who rushed back to Israel overnight, recounted at the hospital that he had learned of his son’s injury shortly after giving an interview in New York in which he was asked about violence in the West Bank.

“The violence there is by Palestinians who harm Jews, with the aim of uprooting the Jews from this land,” Leiter said. “If there are exceptions from the other side, they are exceptions — but the war that is taking place here is a war for the right of the Jews to live in this land.”

Leiter’s elder son, Maj. (res.) Moshe Yedidya Leiter, who was killed in battle alongside three other reservists in northern Gaza in November 2023.

Confronting Mamdani

Netanyahu is also expected to use his UN address to berate New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for calling him a war criminal, in a feud that highlights the prime minister’s growing isolation ahead of elections at home.

Addressing the mayor directly in a video statement earlier this week, Netanyahu said he was going to New York “to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers” and “to tell the truth about you.” He falsely accused Mamdani of supporting Hamas terrorists.

Mamdani campaigned for office on a promise to have Netanyahu arrested for alleged war crimes should he visit the largest US city, though he later said he had determined he lacked the legal authority to do so. This week, Mamdani described Netanyahu as “the architect of a horrific genocide against Palestinians.”

Netanyahu, who rejects war crimes allegations, will be making his first visit to New York since Mamdani took office in January. Israelis opposed to Netanyahu’s right-wing government are planning to protest in the city.

“He’s not really speaking to the UN, he’s speaking to the Israeli public,” said former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren, who expects Netanyahu’s address to resemble a “campaign speech.”

“Maybe he’s thinking, ‘If I can attack Mamdani and attack the Iranians, somebody who was wavering between voting for me and voting for (Gadi) Eisenkot may decide to vote for me,'” Oren said, referring to the former military chief who is Netanyahu’s leading rival.

The election is scheduled for October 27.

Netanyahu not expected to meet Trump

Netanyahu is making an unusually short visit to the US for his UN address. After arriving early on Thursday and delivering his speech in the afternoon, he is expected to fly back the same day.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, two Israeli officials earlier said that Netanyahu’s team was discussing potentially holding meetings with senior US officials including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, though nothing had been set.

Notably, Netanyahu is not expected to meet Trump. The two men jointly launched a war on Iran on February 28 to degrade the Iranian regime’s military capabilities, distance threats posed by Iran — including its nuclear and ballistic missile programs — and “create the conditions” for the Iranian people to topple the regime, the military and other Israeli leaders have said. But they found themselves on a collision course after the US and Iran agreed to an interim ceasefire that Netanyahu opposed.

Many Israelis were angered by that deal, and opinion polls showed they questioned Trump’s commitment to Israeli security.

“A lack of any encounter with the president, a month before an Israeli election, will indicate that Trump is keeping a distance from him and will be negative for Netanyahu’s campaign,” said Nimrod Goren, president of Mitvim, an Israeli think tank focused on the country’s foreign policy.

Israel confronts international criticism

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has in the past made a visual spectacle of his UN appearances, using charts, diagrams and props to warn of Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for civilian purposes.

Last year several delegations walked out as Netanyahu approached the lectern while supporters in the gallery cheered.

Goren said Netanyahu’s speech would likely follow a familiar script: defending Israel, confronting its critics and warning about Iran while arguing that Israel’s opposition to Tehran serves the interests of the wider international community.

He will also likely tout what he sees as his own achievements and close ties to Trump and the US, Goren said.

Israel has faced deepening diplomatic isolation since the Hamas-led attack on nearly three years ago and the war it triggered.

Netanyahu is unable to travel to many countries because of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant on war crimes charges, issued for him and his defense minister during the early stages of the war, as well as the then-leaders of Hamas, in 2024.

Earlier this month, once-steadfast allies Britain, France and Canada announced sanctions targeting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which drew a muted response from Washington.