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Jerusalem: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced leaders who had recognized a Palestinian state, as he headed to the United States on Thursday for White House talks and an address to the UN General Assembly.
His remarks came three days after France led a special summit on the sidelines of the General Assembly, which saw a slew of Western governments recognize the State of Palestine against the backdrop of the nearly two-year Gaza war.
Netanyahu is due to address the assembly on Friday.
“At the General Assembly, I will speak our truth — the truth of the citizens of Israel, the truth of the (Israeli) soldiers, the truth of our nation,” Netanyahu said at Ben Gurion airport ahead of his departure, according to a statement from his office.
“I will condemn those leaders who, instead of condemning the murderers, rapists and burners of children, want to give them a state in the heart of Israel. This will not happen.”
On Wednesday, Netanyahu said the recent flurry of recognitions of Palestinian statehood, including by Britain and France, did “not obligate Israel in any way,” calling it a “shameful capitulation of some leaders to Palestinian terror.”
On Thursday, he said he would meet with US President Trump for a fourth time in Washington.
“I will discuss with him the great opportunities that our victories have brought, as well as our need to complete the goals of the war: to bring back all our hostages, to defeat Hamas and to expand the circle of peace that has opened up to us,” Netanyahu said.
US envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday he expected a breakthrough related to Gaza in the coming days, saying Trump had presented a plan to Arab and Islamic countries.
“We presented what we call the Trump 21-point plan for peace in the Mideast and Gaza,” Witkoff said.
“I think it addresses Israeli concerns as well as the concerns of all the neighbors in the region,” he said on the sidelines of the General Assembly, without elaborating on the 21 points.
“We’re hopeful, and I might say even confident, that in the coming days we’ll be able to announce some sort of breakthrough.”
An Israeli air strike on a home where displaced people had taken refuge in central Gaza killed at least 11 people on Thursday, the territory’s civil defense spokesperson told AFP.
In recent weeks the military has been carrying out a ground assault on Gaza City, the territory’s largest urban center, forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.

HANOI: Vietnam’s Communist Party chief To Lam is expected to visit North Korea next month, two Vietnamese officials said, marking the first visit in nearly 20 years for a Vietnamese leader to the largely isolated nation.
The two Communist countries maintain close diplomatic ties but have currently no trade relations, according to the Vietnamese embassy in Pyongyang.
The possible visit, with preparations still underway, has not been officially announced by either side. Vietnam’s ministry of foreign affairs and North Korea’s embassy in Hanoi did not respond to requests for comment.
The two officials declined to indicate a precise time frame for the visit and the issues that may be discussed, but one official said Lam would meet North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un.
The last time a Vietnamese leader visited North Korea was in 2007 when the head of the ruling Communist Party Nong Duc Manh embarked on a three-day trip to the country, marking the first visit by a Vietnamese party chief since the late President Ho Chi Minh in 1957.
In a rare foreign trip, Kim visited Hanoi in 2019 as part of a visit whose highlight was a summit with US President Donald Trump, then serving his first term at the White House.
Multiple lower-ranking officials have met in either Hanoi or Pyongyang in recent years, according to a list of meetings on the website of the Vietnamese embassy in North Korea, which shows meetings resumed last year after a five-year pause.
This year the two countries celebrate 75 years of diplomatic relations.

LAM VISITED SOUTH KOREA IN AUGUST
The visit would follow Lam’s trip in August to South Korea, a country with which Pyongyang has tense relations. Lam was the first foreign leader hosted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung since he took office in June.
Hanoi is highly reliant on investments from Seoul. Samsung Electronics and other large Korean multinationals are leading contributors to Vietnam’s economy, with existing investments exceeding $90 billion, largely in factories.
The latest year for which data on trade with North Korea is available is 2016, when Vietnam exported to Pyongyang goods worth nearly $3 million, according to the Vietnamese embassy.
North Korea has for decades faced international sanctions largely linked to its nuclear weapons program.