U.S.: U.N. General Assembly Resolution is "insult to the victims of October 7"

"Colleagues, U.S. opposition to this resolution should come as no surprise.

The United States opposes the New York Declaration, as we opposed the High-level International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution and the resolution that mandated it.

General Assembly action on the New York Declaration is yet another misguided and ill-timed publicity stunt that undermines serious diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. Make no mistake – this resolution is a gift to Hamas. It is likewise cynical, transparently driven by the domestic politics rather than a serious foreign policy agenda.

As Secretary Rubio has noted, progress and negotiations aimed at achieving a ceasefire over the summer collapsed when one of the states organizing the conference encouraged Hamas’ intransigence by announcing its intention to recognize a conjectural Palestinian state.

Far from promoting peace, the conference has already prolonged the war, emboldened Hamas, and harmed the prospects of peace in both short and long term.

The United States will not participate in this insult to the victims of October 7, but we will continue to lead real-world efforts to end the fighting and to deliver a permanent peace.

We should be focused on how to end the war and eliminate and disarm Hamas.

This war could end tomorrow if Hamas was disarmed, released hostages, and surrendered. But Hamas continues to refuse.

Today’s resolution is yet another counterproductive gesture that only rewards Hamas, drags out the war, and undercuts the very diplomatic efforts to free the hostages and end the suffering in Gaza, which the New York Declaration claims to support.

The declaration this resolution endorses is merely another example of the stale thinking that has led to failure after failure in the Middle East peace negotiations for decades but remains prevalent in the halls of the United Nations and among too many of its members.

The declaration engages in disturbing moral equivalence and fails to recognize the reality that Hamas’ terrorism on October 7 was the reason this war was necessary, and its refusal to free the hostages and lay down its arms is the reason this war continues.

The version of the declaration being voted on today even continues to contain language endorsing the so-called “right of return,” which would mean the demographic death of Israel as a Jewish state.

For these reasons, the United States urges delegations to join us in voting against the resolution."