Israel's Ambassador to the United States and the United Nations Gilad Erdan on Tuesday sharply criticized the United Nations Security Council for not holding the Palestinian Authority leadership accountable for its actions, the Council's decision to invite Hanan Ashrawi, a former senior leader in the Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority, as a member of Palestinian Arab civil society to brief the Council, and for willfully choosing to ignore Iran's malevolent behavior during a discussion on the Middle East.
In his remarks, Ambassador Erdan said, "Unfortunately, rather than pushing peace forward, the Security Council’s debates on the Situation in the Middle East, only seem to perpetuate the conflict. Rather than helping to turn the vision of peace into a reality, these debates create an alternate and false reality. These biased debates give the Palestinians the illusion that they will never be held accountable for their crimes and that all of their radical demands could be granted by the international community. The unbalanced discussions only serve to strengthen Palestinian rejectionism of any further negotiations with Israel, thereby maintaining the conflict."
Ambassador Erdan added, "The latest example of this absurd approach is the decision to invite, as a representative of civil society, an individual who was a member of the PLO Executive Committee, and who has been a Palestinian politician for decades. What’s next? Will you invite Hassan Rouhani and Javad Zarif as representatives of Iranian civil society? Ashrawi is not just a lifelong spokesperson for the Palestinian political leadership. She is an opponent of peace. Following the Abraham Accords, she condemned these historic peace agreements, and claimed that the leaders of the UAE and Bahrain had been “coerced and cajoled” into making peace with Israel. Does the Security Council really want to give a platform to an enemy of peace?"
On Iran, Ambassador Erdan said, "While some members of the Security Council remain stuck in the mud of their anti-Israel obsession, the real threat to global security, is quickly advancing. Iran continues to progress towards its goal of becoming a nuclear threshold state. The murderous Ayatollah regime continues to openly violate its international commitments in the fields of enrichment, stockpiling, uranium metal and advanced R&D, while obstructing the IAEA. It is using the diplomatic talks, to buy time, so that it can enrich uranium to near weapons-grade levels, while gaining nuclear know-how that can never be reversed. At the same time, Iran continues to spread death, destruction and instability throughout the region, as it seeks to advance a Shiite hegemony over the Middle East, and exports terror around the world."
"Let me be clear – Israel favors a diplomatic solution. A diplomatic solution that would truly prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold stat
"Yet seeing as Iran poses an existential threat to Israel, the State of Israel can never and will never, allow Iran to become a nuclear threshold state. We will do whatever is necessary to stop Iran’s nuclear drive, and counter the threat from its armies of proxies, along our borders and beyond our borders," Erdan concluded.