Representatives of both the Palestinians and Israel passionately argued their cases at a rare emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday that was convened to address the Israel-Hamas war and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The Palestinian representative, Riyad Mansour, said that, even as the assembly met, Palestinian families in the besieged enclave were being killed, hospitals were coming to a halt and neighborhoods were being destroyed.
“There is no time to mourn — more death is on the way,” Mr. Mansour said.
Since Oct. 7, when more than 1,400 people in Israel were killed and some 200 taken hostage in coordinated Hamas attacks launched from Gaza, the Israeli military has been bombarding the Palestinian enclave. In the hours before Mr. Mansour spoke, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza released the names of more than 6,700 people it said have been killed, including more than 2,000 children, and said that the remains of an additional 280 people had not yet been identified. The numbers could not be independently verified.
“The answer to the killing of Palestinian civilians is not the killing of Israeli civilians,” Mr. Mansour said. “And the answer to the killing of Israeli civilians is not the killing of Palestinian civilians.” But he denounced what he called a double standard, asking why “some feel so much pain for Israelis and so little pain for us, the Palestinians.”
“This selective outrage is outrageous and needs to stop,” he said, adding that the people being slaughtered in Gaza have “survived decades of military occupation, a 16-years-long blockade, and five wars.”
“How could you leave them to be killed once again?” he asked.
Israel’s representative to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, insisted in his own address that Israel was at war not with Palestinians but with Hamas,which he likened to the Nazis and the Islamic State.
Mr. Erdan made a point of revisiting the Oct. 7 attacks in vivid, bloody detail, describing killings, rapes, torture and brutalizations of civilians during the Oct. 7 attack, calling it a “pogram.” He noted that more than 220 people from many countries had been taken hostage, including Holocaust survivors and “babies,” one just 9 months old. At one point, he pulled out a tablet to show a graphic video that he said had been taken by Hamas, which he said showed a Hamas “savage” trying to decapitate an agricultural worker with a hoe.
Mr. Erdan said the war would end immediately if Hamas handed over the hostages, dropped its weapons and its fighters turned themselves in, and questioned why there were no U.N. resolutions demanding that. He rejected any calls for a cease-fire on the ground, saying that Hamas would use the time to rearm and attack again. And he excoriated Iran, blaming the country for arming, funding and training Hamas.
Mr. Mansour, the Palestinian representative, also directly responded to a speech the Israeli foreign minister, Eli Cohen, made at the U.N. Security Council this week. Mr. Cohen called for Israeli hostages to be brought home, but “for millions of Palestinians, there is no home to go back to,” Mr. Mansour said. “For thousands, there is no family left to embrace.”
“He told you how horrible it was to kill civilians,” Mr. Mansour continued, “just before justifying the killing of Palestinian civilians by the thousands. He spoke of the fear felt by people when rockets are launched. Israeli bombs have not spared a single square meter of Gaza.”
The assembly session opened with the body’s current president, Ambassador Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago, calling for an immediate cease-fire to allow more humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. He condemned Hamas’s attacks on Israel while adding that “the ceaseless bombardment of the Gaza Strip by Israel and its consequences are deeply alarming.”
The emergency special session also heard from representatives of Jordan and Iran, among other nations, before adjourning. The session is scheduled to resume on Friday, when it is expected to hold a vote on a draft resolution, brought by Jordan and the Arab Group, calling for an immediate cease-fire and for all parties to comply with international humanitarian law.
While General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, they carry a heavy symbolic weight.
Ayman Safadi, Jordan’s foreign minister, called on the assembly’s members to “make a stand” and vote for the resolution even though, he said, “we all know Israel will ignore it.”
“The right to self-defense is not a license to kill with impunity. Collective punishment is not self-defense — it is a war crime,” he said, adding that “Israel cannot remain above the law.”
Anushka Patil contributed reporting.
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