Netanyahu meets with delegation of visiting UN ambassadors, touts Abraham Accords
Presumed incoming PM also discusses the ‘ongoing struggle’ against Iran’s attempts to gain nuclear weapons
Presumed prime minister-to-be Benjamin Netanyahu met on Sunday with a group of 13 United Nations ambassadors who are visiting Israel.
Netanyahu spoke with the delegation — which visited the United Arab Emirates before arriving in Israel — about the “historical importance of the Abraham Accords,” according to his office.
The office did not say which nations the delegation members were from.
Netanyahu also discussed the “ongoing struggle” against Iran’s attempts to gain nuclear weapons, as well as the possibilities of expanding the Abraham Accords to other nations.
He highlighted what he said were opportunities for additional agreements and collaborations with Israel’s regional neighbors, his office said.
The visit was led and organized by the Permanent Representative of Israel to the UN Gilad Erdan, in collaboration with the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the UAE to the UN Lana Nusseibeh.
Netanyahu and the right-religious bloc he leads won 64 of the 120 Knesset seats in general elections last month. He has until December 21 to form a government — set to be the most right-wing in Israeli history — after President Isaac Herzog on Friday granted him 10 additional days to finish the task, one which has proven more complicated than Netanyahu had initially hoped.
Also on Friday, Hadash-Ta’al chairman MK Ayman Odeh met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and expressed concerns about the incoming government.
During their meeting at UN Headquarters in New York, Odeh said Israel’s Arab population was fearful of the far-right incoming government and asked for “international intervention” to protect it from potential harm from the presumed incoming national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir.
In a letter he presented to Guterres during the meeting, Odeh wrote that Ben Gvir “has defended and glorified Jewish terrorists who have murdered Arab Palestinians and called for Arabs to be forcibly transferred from the state.”
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.
