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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the year declaring that he was “shoulder to shoulder” with U.S. President Donald Trump as both countries initiated a war against Iran. But this week, as many world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, there were no plans for both men to be in the same room, let alone the same city.
As the war with Iran drags on, Trump and Netanyahu are at odds over how to carry it out, which has strained the relationship between the two allies. Netanyahu has also faced global criticism for Israel's war in Gaza and for settler violence in the West Bank. Instead of a packed agenda, Netanyahu, who arrived in New York on Thursday, planned to meet with only a handful of leaders before delivering his speech.
The apparent snub underscored the extent to which the relationship between Trump and the Prime Minister has fractured. In Washington, many people associate Netanyahu with the increasingly unpopular war with Iran, and Trump has gone to great lengths to avoid the appearance that the Israeli leader pushed him into a conflict that, according to the U.S. President, would be a “little excursion” lasting a few weeks.
Netanyahu's brief visit also demonstrated how isolated he is globally, three years after starting a devastating war in Gaza in retaliation for the attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The Israeli Prime Minister faces reelection next month, in an election that many consider a referendum on his responsibility for security failures surrounding the attacks and his ability to defend Israel's reputation on the world stage.
Even so, Netanyahu was undeterred when dozens of diplomats walked out of the room when he took the stage on Thursday.
“If there are other moral cowards who have not yet left this room, please do so now,” Netanyahu asserted, and delivered a defiant speech in which he lashed out at critics who accuse Israel of genocide and war crimes in Gaza.
He also accused New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who had called for Netanyahu’s arrest, of spreading lies about Israel and endangering Jewish New Yorkers.
Netanyahu is a showman
Even so, the Prime Minister is a showman, and often resorts to props and visual aids during his speeches, delivered in impeccable English, to reinforce his message. His intervention, ahead of next month's elections, seemed aimed at Israeli voters, and was repeatedly interrupted by cheers from supporters he had brought into the room.
“He times his speech so that it is broadcast here during prime time,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States who served during Netanyahu’s tenure and lives in Israel.
But several experts point out that, without the usual high-profile meetings, the trip could harm Netanyahu's image back home.
“I think the trip is a mistake, because it exposes his weaknesses,” argued Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations and a professor at the Israeli universities Bar-Ilan and Reichman.
Although many Israelis consider the UN to be hostile toward Israel, he added, the fact that he could not secure a meeting with Trump only highlights how poorly Netanyahu has managed the relationship with his country’s strongest ally.
In 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden was reluctant to host Netanyahu at the White House, but still made time to meet with him on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
“Israel cannot survive without the United States,” Gilboa stated.
Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel and a long-time supporter of Israeli settlements, has harshly criticized settlers who attack Palestinian communities in the West Bank. In unusual remarks for an ambassador, he referred to the attackers as “terrorists.”
“It is an indication of a deeper rift,” Oren said about Netanyahu’s sparse agenda.
When Trump was in New York on Tuesday, he met with a number of leaders from Arab nations, as well as from Denmark, Japan, Greenland, Ukraine, and Venezuela, among others. He then quickly returned to Washington to roll out the red carpet for Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Netanyahu has met with Trump seven times since the Republican returned to office in January 2025, although only once since the war with Iran began.
Not meeting with the President was a “big, big missed opportunity for him at a time when he cannot afford any failures,” said Natan Sachs, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
On previous trips, Netanyahu met with a list of high-profile leaders, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and then-German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
This year, however, the Prime Minister’s office indicated that “many world leaders” asked to meet with Netanyahu during his brief visit, but that he had a “tight schedule” and needed to return to Israel before the start of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which begins at sundown on Friday.
On his schedule, the statement noted, were leaders from Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Panama, Ethiopia, Greece, Slovenia, and Papua New Guinea.
[Publicidad]