PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s accusation that America backed Israel’s creation to expel its Jews is outrageous, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said on Wednesday as she denounced antisemitic and racist rhetoric fueling Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Abbas’s “claim that the United States ‘wanted to get rid of the Jews and benefit from their presence in Palestine’ is totally without basis and it is deeply offensive to the American people,” Thomas-Greenfield told the Security Council during its monthly meeting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Thomas-Greenfield took issue in particular with the speech Abbas had delivered to the UN on May 15 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Nakba Day, which for Palestinians marks the catastrophe of Israel’s creation and the resulting displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians. The US was among 45 nations that boycotted the speech and the Nakba Day event held that evening in the UN General Assembly’s main hall.
During that speech, Abbas equated statements by Israeli officials with those of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Such comments, Thomas-Greenfield said, “are a gross affront to Holocaust victims and survivors. Making this kind of statement about the world’s only Jewish state is entirely unacceptable, especially during a time of rising antisemitic violence around the world.”
But she also slammed those Israelis who chanted “death to Arabs” and uttered other racist statements during the annual Jerusalem Day parade last week. “These chants are outrageous and they are unacceptable,” the envoy said.
US State Department also condemned Israeli actions
The State Department in the last week had also condemned those chants as well as other actions by Israel, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to the Aqsa Mosque compound on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.
It also spoke out against Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s decision to seek the authorization of the West Bank Homesh yeshiva and the IDF’s signing of the bill rescinding the ban on the entry of Israelis to the site of the four northern Samaria settlements that Israel evacuated as part of the 2005 Disengagement Plan.
Thomas-Greenfield picked upon these issues as well, stating that the US was “concerned by the provocative visit an Israeli minister made to the Haram al-Sharif/the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on May 21, and the accompanying inflammatory rhetoric.
“This holy place should not be used for political purposes. We call on all parties to respect the sanctity,” she said, adding that “I want to reaffirm our longstanding position in support of the historic status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites.”
“I want to reaffirm our longstanding position in support of the historic status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites.”
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield
The envoy moved over to the issue of Homesh, stating that the Biden administration was ”deeply troubled by Israel’s decision to allow citizens to establish a permanent presence in the Homesh outpost,” which was illegally built on private Palestinian land, which is the site of the four evacuated settlements from 2005.
Such a step, she said, violates Israeli promises to the United States and “undermines the prospects for peace.”
“Without new funding, [the] World Food Programme will suspend cash assistance to some 200,000 Palestinians next week and [the] UN Relief and Works Agency will not have the resources to deliver core services in September.
“This comes alongside existing financial challenges facing the PA and declining donor support overall. I encourage member states to immediately seek ways to increase their support to Palestinians, including funding to UNRWA and WFP, without which we will face serious humanitarian and, potentially, security challenges,” she said.