The United Nations General Assembly convened on Friday, voting overwhelmingly to support the “New York Declaration,” a resolution outlining “tangible, time-bound and irreversible steps” toward a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, without the involvement of Hamas. While the resolution represents a significant shift in the international approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which for the first time, the UN explicitly condemns Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terrorist attack while simultaneously demanding the terror organization’s complete removal from Gaza’s leadership, Israel rejected the declaration, calling it a prize for the terrorist organization.
The United Nations General Assembly’s overwhelming endorsement of a resolution calling for Palestinian statehood represents a deeply misguided approach that rewards terrorism and undermines genuine prospects for peace. With 142 countries voting in favor of this non-binding declaration, the international community has once again demonstrated its willingness to ignore the fundamental realities on the ground and hand Hamas a strategic victory.
The declaration states that the war must end and Hamas must disarm and submit to the Palestinian Authority, which will run the Palestinian state.
The Two-State Solution would create an unprecedented militarized Arab state inside Israel’s borders, ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem. This would require a return to the ceasefire lines drawn up after the defensive 1967 Six-Day War that are considered to be indefensible against an Arab threat. The UN resolution violates the Oslo Accords which require any resolution concerning Judea and Samaria to be the result of bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon slammed the resolution.
“This one-sided declaration will not be remembered as a step toward peace, only as another hollow gesture that weakens this assembly’s credibility,” stated Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.
“This is not diplomacy,” he said. “It is theater.”
Danon accused the General Assembly of “trying to force through the back door what cannot stand at the negotiating table.”
His assessment was stark but accurate: “When terrorists are the ones cheering, you are not advancing peace; you are advancing terror.”
This resolution, despite its condemnation of Hamas and calls for the release of hostages, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the conflict and provides Hamas with exactly what it has sought since October 7, 2023 – international legitimization of its strategy of using civilian suffering as a political weapon.
The timing could not be more insulting to the memory of the 1,200 Israelis murdered on October 7 and the families of 48 hostages still held captive in Gaza’s tunnels. Rather than maintaining pressure on Hamas to surrender and release the hostages unconditionally, the international community has chosen to offer the terror group a pathway to political relevance through this resolution.
The current crisis must be understood in its proper historical context. In 2005, Israel made an unprecedented gesture for peace by completely withdrawing from Gaza, forcibly evacuating over 8,000 Israeli settlers and dismantling all settlements in the territory. This painful decision was made with the genuine expectation that it would lead to peaceful coexistence and demonstrate Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution.
The withdrawal was complete – not a single Israeli soldier or civilian remained in Gaza. Israel handed over a territory with functioning infrastructure, including greenhouses and agricultural facilities that could have formed the foundation of a Palestinian economy. The international community hailed this as a historic step toward peace.
Instead of peace, Gaza became a launching pad for terror. In 2006, Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections, and by 2007, it had violently seized complete control of Gaza in a bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority. Hamas systematically eliminated its political rivals, throwing Fatah members from rooftops and establishing a brutal theocratic dictatorship.
Rather than building schools, hospitals, and economic opportunities with the billions in international aid that flowed into Gaza, Hamas invested in an underground terror infrastructure. Miles of tunnels, tens of thousands of rockets, and a military apparatus dedicated not to defending Palestinians but to attacking Israeli civilians became Hamas’s primary focus.
Political experts believe that what happened in Gaza after Israel’s withdrawal is precisely what will happen in Judea and Samaria if a Palestinian state is created.
Polling data reveals an uncomfortable truth that the UN resolution conveniently ignores: Hamas has not only maintained but actually increased its popularity among Palestinians in both Gaza and Judea and Samaria since October 7. Multiple surveys have shown majority support for the October 7 attacks among Palestinians, with Hamas enjoying higher approval ratings than the Palestinian Authority.
This reality makes the resolution’s premise – that Hamas can simply be removed and replaced with the Palestinian Authority – dangerously naive. The PA, which was decisively rejected by Gaza’s population and driven out by Hamas, lacks the legitimacy, capability, or will to govern Gaza effectively. President Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 19th year of his four-year term, represents no one but himself and his cronies in Ramallah.
The resolution’s emphasis on UNRWA’s “essential role” and pledged continued funding exposes the international community’s willful blindness to the agency’s complicity in perpetuating the conflict. Evidence has mounted showing UNRWA’s direct involvement in supporting Hamas’s terror infrastructure, with agency facilities used to store weapons, agency employees participating in the October 7 massacre, and the organization’s educational system indoctrinating Palestinian children with anti-Semitic hatred.
The UN system itself has become an enabler of Hamas’s strategy. By consistently failing to hold Hamas accountable for its war crimes while disproportionately condemning Israel’s defensive actions, the UN has created a moral hazard that encourages terrorist tactics. The organization that should be promoting peace has instead become a participant in prolonging conflict.
This resolution fundamentally misdiagnoses the obstacles to peace. The problem is not the absence of a Palestinian state – it is the Palestinian leadership’s continued rejection of Israel’s right to exist and their strategy of using violence and international pressure rather than genuine negotiation.
Israel has repeatedly demonstrated its willingness to make painful concessions for peace, from Camp David to the Gaza withdrawal to multiple offers of Palestinian statehood. Each time, Palestinian leaders have chosen conflict over compromise, terror over negotiation.