New York police arrested 104 people outside UN headquarters on 24 September as dozens of delegations walked out on Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza.

Netanyahu told the delegates who stayed that settler violence in the occupied West Bank causes two or three casualties a year. Israel's own security figures show six Palestinians killed and 140 wounded in 660 settler attacks in the first half of 2026, a 63 per cent rise on the same period of 2025.

Walkout

Delegates began leaving the General Assembly hall as Netanyahu took the podium. The Palestinian mission had urged member states to walk out together.

Turkey's state news agency counted about 70 delegations that walked out or stayed away, from its review of the footage. No official count exists, because the UN does not register who leaves the hall.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, Indonesia and Malaysia were among the states whose delegations left. Delegations from Spain, Brazil, Peru, Cuba, Nigeria, Ghana, Bangladesh and Botswana also went, according to the same footage review. The seats of the Palestinian and Iranian delegations stayed empty throughout.

The U.S., the UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Ireland and China kept delegates in the hall. Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs said it attends every national statement during high-level week, including those of governments with which it "vehemently" disagrees.

Netanyahu told the delegates still seated that "any other moral cowards who haven't yet left this hall" should go.

Qatar's deputy ambassador said Netanyahu was "speaking to a half-empty room" and defended Qatar's mediation with Hamas.

Delegates also walked out when Netanyahu addressed the Assembly on 26 September 2025, days after France, the UK, Canada and Australia recognised the State of Palestine.

Speech

Netanyahu called the genocide accusation against Israel the greatest lie of the century, called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a tyrant and accused Qatar of funding U.S. universities to turn students against Israel. He accused New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani of backing Hamas.

Burhanettin Duran, Turkey's presidential communications director, called the remarks baseless and incompatible with the UN's ideals of peace, law and dialogue.

Netanyahu told the Assembly Israel is fighting a seven-front war, in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen and Iraq, and said Israeli and U.S. aircraft had flown joint missions over Iran. He held up a pager to recall the September 2024 detonations in Lebanon that killed 12 people and wounded more than 3,000, and attacked the UK and France for imposing limited sanctions on exports from West Bank settlements.

Mahmoud Abbas addressed the Assembly hours earlier by video message after the U.S. refused him a visa for the second consecutive year. The Israeli delegation's seats stayed empty while he spoke. "We will not leave our homeland. We will not accept displacement," Abbas said.

Visit and election

Netanyahu's plane landed on the morning of 24 September at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of Manhattan, and he flew back to Israel the same night, ahead of the Sukkot holiday.

Israeli security officials steered the flight away from John F. Kennedy International Airport over concern that Mamdani might try to hold the aircraft on the ground. Mamdani pledged during his 2025 campaign to seek Netanyahu's arrest before backing away from the position.

Netanyahu's office listed no meeting with President Donald Trump or any other U.S. official during the visit.

Netanyahu addressed the Assembly 33 days before an Israeli election on 27 October in which he is fighting to keep power. Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar party led Likud in four of five polls published on 13 September, and two of those polls put the government and opposition blocs level at 52 seats each. A majority in the 120-seat Knesset takes 61.

Settler violence

Netanyahu blamed settler violence on a small group of juvenile delinquents and said he had deployed the Shin Bet security service against them.

Israel's security establishment counted about 100 more incidents of settler nationalist crime in July, on top of the 660 in the first half of the year.

The IDF and Shin Bet counted 867 such incidents in 2025, up 27 per cent on 2024.

Netanyahu called settler violence a metastasising cancer in a cabinet discussion in March 2026, according to the official summary of the meeting. The cabinet approved a plan against it and kept the decision secret.

Settlers killed at least 15 Palestinians between January and 24 July 2026, two of them children, Human Rights Watch said. The highest previous annual toll was 16, across all of 2025.

Settlers killed Jihad Abu Naim, 32, and his 14-year-old nephew Aws Hamdi Naasan at a school in al-Mughayyir on 21 April, and the brothers Fahim and Muhammad Muammar at their home in Qaryut on 2 March.

Settlers carried out an average of 6.6 attacks a day in 2026 that caused casualties or property damage, the highest rate the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has documented.

Israel's government allocated 50 million shekels in March 2026 for settlement outposts, paying for all-terrain vehicles, night-vision goggles and drones, Human Rights Watch said. Three per cent of settler violence cases since 2005 ended in conviction, the Israeli rights group Yesh Din said.

Settler violence displaced nearly 1,700 Palestinians between January and late March 2026, more than in all of 2025, OCHA said.

Gaza toll

Gaza's health ministry counts 73,919 Palestinians killed and 174,977 wounded as of 22 September. Of the dead, 1,399 were killed after the ceasefire of 10 October 2025 took effect.

Israeli attacks killed 24 Palestinians over five days in late August, 21 of them in air strikes and four of them children, the UN said. The UN put the post-ceasefire toll at 1,334 killed and 4,429 injured by 4 September.

Israeli forces hold the territory behind the "yellow line," the boundary drawn under the ceasefire. Palestinians were left with 47 per cent of Gaza when it took effect and now hold less than 40 per cent as the line has advanced, the UN said. About 2.1 million people, almost the entire population, are displaced inside that shrinking area, and 1.98 million need shelter.

Israel closed every crossing into Gaza on 28 February 2026 as its war with Iran began. Weekly aid deliveries fell from about 4,200 trucks to 590, and by May only Kerem Shalom and Zikim were open for humanitarian goods, Human Rights Watch said.

None of Gaza's 37 hospitals was fully functioning in February, and 19 were partly working. More than 18,500 patients, 4,000 of them children, are waiting for medical evacuation. At least 593 aid workers have been killed since October 2023, Human Rights Watch said.

Famine was confirmed in Gaza for the first time on 22 August 2025 by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the UN-backed hunger monitor. By December no area remained in famine, but 1.6 million people, 77 per cent of the population, still faced high levels of acute food insecurity. The monitor projected more than 100,000 children would suffer acute malnutrition by April 2026.

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry found on 16 September 2025 that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. It identified four of the five genocidal acts in the 1948 Genocide Convention: killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting destructive conditions of life and imposing measures to prevent births.

The Commission named Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and former defence minister Yoav Gallant as having incited genocide, and called on states to stop transferring arms that could be used in it. Israel rejected the findings.

The International Court of Justice set 22 November 2027 for South Africa's reply and 22 May 2029 for Israel's rejoinder in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, in an order of 21 May 2026. Hearings on the merits follow those filings.

First Avenue protest

About 400 people blocked First Avenue near East 39th Street, a few blocks south of UN headquarters, for roughly an hour before the 2 p.m. speech. Jewish Voice for Peace led the action with the Palestinian Youth Movement, New York City Democratic Socialists of America, The People's Forum, the Sunrise Movement and Rabbis for Ceasefire.

Protesters wore matching shirts reading "Jews Say Fund People Not Bombs" and held banners reading "End the genocide" and "Fund healthcare, not warfare."

Officers from the NYPD's Strategic Response Group moved in and cleared the road. NYPD said on 25 September it had arrested 104 people for disorderly conduct. All were issued criminal summonses and released.

Actor Hannah Einbinder were among those arrested, with comedian Caleb Hearon, city council members Chi Ossé and Alexa Avilés, Assembly member Emily Gallagher and Darializa Avila Chevalier.

Avila Chevalier, the Democratic nominee for New York's 13th congressional district, unseated five-term Representative Adriano Espaillat in the June primary. "Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal who belongs at The Hague," she said.

Chris Rabb, the Democratic nominee in Pennsylvania's 3rd district, blocked the road arm in arm with Adam Hamawy, a surgeon who volunteered in Gaza and won New Jersey's 12th district primary on 2 June. Melat Kiros, who won the Democratic primary in Colorado's 1st district, and former city comptroller Brad Lander joined the protest, as did actors Cynthia Nixon and Elliot Page.

"We want the United States to stop arming Israel," Nixon said.

Singer-songwriters Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker and comedians Sarah Sherman and Mary Beth Barone also joined the blockade.

"We will not be silent as our government fully funds a genocide in Palestine," Einbinder said.

Stefanie Fox, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said the protest targeted U.S. arms transfers as well as Netanyahu: "We demand an end to the impunity and complicity right here."

Well over a thousand people marched through Midtown at rush hour later in the day, on a route planned from Bryant Park to the UN at East 46th Street. "Netanyahu is not welcome in our city," said Nas Issa of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Several hundred people rallied against Netanyahu at Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza, beside the UN, at a protest organised by liberal Jewish groups including T'ruah, J Street and the New Israel Fund. About two dozen Netanyahu supporters gathered nearby and blew whistles to drown out the speakers.

Several dozen Israeli expatriates from the group UnXeptable rallied in Union Square that morning, calling on Israelis to vote Netanyahu out on 27 October.

Artists and Gaza

Macklemore announced a Free Palestine tour of Dublin, Paris and London for late October on 24 September, the day Netanyahu spoke, with proceeds going to Palestinian causes. The rapper had opened for Ed Sheeran at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 4 September, told the crowd he joined the tour to say "Free Palestine," and was dropped from the remaining dates.

Katie Gavin of the band MUNA criticised Sheeran from the stage in Dallas on 20 September, saying the band wanted only to say no to a genocide and that Sheeran could do the same.

Melissa Barrera publicly backed Macklemore this month. Spyglass Media dropped Barrera from Scream VII in November 2023 over social media posts about Gaza.

Hayley Williams of Paramore shouted "Free Palestine" at a concert in Gilford, New Hampshire, on 14 September, as she had at a show in Oakland in May. Williams is among artists backing No Music for Genocide, a campaign asking musicians to geo-block their catalogues in Israel.

Rachel Accurso, the children's YouTube presenter known as Ms. Rachel, featured Rahaf, a three-year-old double amputee from Gaza, in a 2025 video and has raised money for relief in the territory. The pro-Israel group StopAntisemitism called for her to be investigated.

Mamdani and the warrant

Mamdani, who did not join the protests, called Netanyahu "a war criminal and an architect of a horrific genocide" in a television interview on 21 September. After the speech he said no lie could change the fact that Netanyahu remains the subject of an ICC warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity.

ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I issued warrants on 21 November 2024 for Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The judges found reasonable grounds to believe both bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.

The U.S. is not a party to the Rome Statute and has no treaty duty to arrest him, unlike the court's states parties.

U.S. bomb sale

The Trump administration approved a $2.8 billion sale of 40,000 bombs of 2,000 pounds to Israel on 15 September: 20,000 Mk84s and 20,000 BLU-117s. Congress was informally notified.

The Biden administration paused delivery of 2,000-pound bombs in 2024 over civilian casualties in Gaza. Trump lifted the hold on returning to office.

Abbas asked in his address how long some states would keep supplying Israel with weapons.

Issa called on city and state officials to divest New York City pension funds from Israel bonds, act against sales in the city of land in West Bank settlements, investigate the charitable status of groups that send military supplies to settlements and end cooperation with ICE.