• United Nations
• Middle East and North Africa
• Rishi Iyengar
• John Haltiwanger

September 26, 2025, 5:20 PM View Comments ()

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, our final edition from the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) before we resume our usual weekly programming next Thursday.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gets a chilly UNGA reception, China seizes its chance to undercut Washington’s global role, and SitRep talks with the vice president of Yemen. 

Bibi Faces Icy Reception at UNGA

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked off the fifth day of UNGA’s high-level week with an incendiary speech in which he denounced Israel’s critics and excoriated the countries that have recognized Palestinian statehood in recent days. “Your disgraceful decision will encourage terrorism against Jews and against innocent people everywhere,” he said. “It will be a mark of shame on all of you.”

“Giving the Palestinians a state one mile from Jerusalem after Oct. 7 is like giving al Qaeda a state one mile from New York City after Sept. 11,” Netanyahu added.

The Israeli leader’s speech—and presence at UNGA more generally—was met with protests both inside the assembly hall and outside of United Nations headquarters. When Netanyahu walked up to the podium to speak, dozens of delegates stood up and walked out. By the time he began speaking, he was doing so to a largely empty hall (though the viewing gallery in the balcony was filled with several supporters who enthusiastically cheered and applauded multiple times during his speech).

During his address, Netanyahu said that “Israel must finish the job” in Gaza, defending the controversial Israeli operation in Gaza City that has forced an estimated half a million people to flee.

Netanyahu also used his address as an opportunity to portray himself as dedicated to bringing home the hostages still held in Gaza. The Israeli leader announced that he’d surrounded Gaza with “massive loudspeakers” broadcasting his speech “in the hope that our dear hostages will hear my message.”

“We have not forgotten you, not even for a second. The people of Israel are with you. We will not falter, and we will not rest until we bring all of you home,” Netanyahu said in words directed at the hostages. He also called on Hamas to lay down its arms and “let my people go.”

But his message was not well received by some of the hostages’ family members, who have accused Netanyahu of endangering their loved ones and standing in the way of cease-fire agreements that could bring them home.

Ruby Chen—the father of hostage Itay Chen, an American Israeli soldier with the Israel Defense Forces who is believed to have been killed on Oct. 7, 2023—told SitRep that he was in the hall for Netanyahu’s address but “left in protest after he [Netanyahu] did not find a way to mention my son.”

There are 48 hostages remaining in captivity in Gaza, but during his speech, Netanyahu only mentioned the names of the 20 hostages believed to be alive. Family members of deceased hostages have emphasized that they want to see the remains of their loved ones returned to help provide closure.

“It was a speech about yesterday, not a speech about tomorrow,” Chen said, adding that he found it “disturbing” to see so many delegates leave in protest at the beginning—which he said was a sign of the damage that Netanyahu has done to Israel’s reputation and standing within the international community.

Hostage families also led protests aimed at Netanyahu in New York City on Friday. In a statement, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum excoriated Netanyahu for deciding “time and again to torpedo, thwart and bomb the chances of returning them home.”

Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, was among a group of demonstrators gathered at the U.N. security perimeter and holding up “bring them home” signs. Lander told SitRep that he was there because “Netanyahu is responsible for the ongoing killing and starvation of kids in Gaza and responsible for ongoing captivity of Israeli hostages, and we want the war to end, we want both the Israeli hostages and Palestinians to be able to go home—and he is an obstacle to that every single day.”

The deep division within the United Nations over Gaza was highlighted by the leader who took the stage immediately after Netanyahu: Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

“Israel’s genocidal onslaught has unleashed unspeakable terror upon women and children in a manner we have not witnessed in the annals of history,” Sharif said in his remarks. “Palestine can no longer remain under Israeli shackles. It must be liberated.”

China’s Moment on the Mic

China has spent much of this week—and indeed, much of the past year—presenting itself as a defender of the rules-based international order and multilateralism in the face of U.S. retreat, and Chinese Premier Li Qiang used UNGA’s biggest platform to make that case on Friday.

“The road ahead might be hard and bumpy, but when all countries unite as one and collaborate in good faith, our strengths will converge into a mighty force with which we can withstand any headwind and cross any hurdle,” Li said during his general debate speech, sharing a perhaps once-unexpected message from a still-imperfect messenger.

He did not call out the United States or others by name, but he implicitly rebuffed U.S. President Donald Trump’s mantras of “peace through strength” and “America First” on several occasions.

“History keeps reminding us that when might dictates right, the world risks division and regression. Should the era of the law of the jungle return and the weak be left as a prey to the strong, human society would face even more bloodshed and brutality,” Li said. “As members of the global family, we must uphold justice while pursuing our own interests. This is particularly true for the major countries.”

The U.N. ‘Survived’

UNGA 80 has seen a lot of focus on the United Nations’ shortcomings and its failure to adequately address global crises ranging from climate change to the war in Gaza. But the organization didn’t hide from that over the course of the week as it vied to prove to the world that it still matters—particularly in the face of challenges presented by Trump, who has slashed foreign aid and rejects multilateralism.

General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock acknowledged on Tuesday that the U.N. has to “do better,” but she made the case that the world would be far worse off without it.

SitRep on Friday asked Comfort Ero, the Crisis Group’s president and CEO, who has been in New York all week for UNGA, whether the U.N. got the message across that it remains a vital player in global affairs.

“They survived the week,” Ero said. Despite its flaws and areas for improvement, the U.N. still has “a very important role to play in this turbulent time,” Ero said.

Though Trump was quite critical of the global body in his speech on Tuesday, Ero emphasized that the U.S. president still spoke of the U.N.’s “tremendous potential,” noting that “that was the message that came from his [Trump’s] own meeting with the secretary-general as well.”

During his meeting with U.N. chief António Guterres, Trump said that the United States is “behind the United Nations 100 percent,” adding that he “may disagree with it sometimes, but I am so behind it because the potential for peace at this institution is great.” This was far from the “worst-case scenario” that the secretariat and some member states may have feared coming into the week, Ero said.

Hot Mic

SitRep sat down with Aidarous al-Zubaidi, the vice president of Yemen’s U.N.-recognized government, on the sidelines of UNGA on Friday morning for a discussion on the country’s future after years of civil war.

Zubaidi said he believes that the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have controlled the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, since 2014, could be defeated in “six to 12 months” with support from foreign powers such as the United States and United Kingdom. The U.S. military has targeted the Houthis in response to their attacks on shipping vessels in the Red Sea, but the Trump administration reached a cease-fire with the militant group back in May. However, Israel continues to strike the rebel group.

While a two-state solution for Israel-Palestine was a major focus at UNGA, Zubaidi also said that “peace in Yemen” requires a “return to two states as they were pre-1990.” Yemen was divided in two for a significant chunk of the 20th century—from 1967 to 1990—with the Yemen Arab Republic in the north and the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the south. But Zubaidi, who is the president of the Southern Transitional Council, a United Arab Emirates-backed secessionist group, said that such an arrangement would not necessarily involve “peace with the Houthis.”

Zubaidi has said that an independent southern Yemen would join the Abraham Accords and normalize ties with Israel. But he told SitRep that the survival of the Abraham Accords depends on Israel “making peace and recognizing the state of Palestine,” a prospect that’s not on the table.

Put on Your Radar

Monday, Sept. 29: Netanyahu is set to meet with Trump at the White House.

By the Numbers

151,796: The number of steps that your SitRep co-authors have collectively walked during UNGA high-level week as of this writing (though John’s count was bolstered by a Chappell Roan concert that he attended Wednesday night). We were also trying to calculate how many cups of coffee we drank, but we lost count about two days ago.

Quote of the Day

“You’re supposed to laugh, by the way.”

—Netanyahu, responding to the silence at UNGA after he described the United Nations as “not exactly a supporter of Israel.”