The Israeli miliary plans to broadcast Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the UN General Assembly to Gaza residents today, using loudspeakers inside and along the strip, according to two Israeli officials.
One of the sources said the directive came from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and is intended to address Palestinians in Gaza directly, attempting to distinguish them from Hamas.
According to a report in the Haaretz daily newspaper, the Israeli military has already prepared an order to transmit the speech using loudspeaker systems mounted on trucks and deployed along the border fence.
CNN has reached out to the PMO and military for comment. It’s unclear if the speech will be translated into Arabic so that more of the Palestinian population in Gaza can understand it.
In response to the news, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid wrote on X: “What’s needed is to place loudspeakers at the UN so that Netanyahu finally hears the cries of the hostages.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to address the UN General Assembly in New York today in a speech expected to focus heavily on the war in Gaza.
In advance of his remarks, Israel launched a campaign around UN headquarters and in New York’s Times Square featuring billboards and trucks carrying the slogan “REMEMBER OCTOBER 7,” which a source said is expected to be a central theme of the address.
France and several other Western nations formally declared their recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN earlier in the week in a move that deepens Israel’s international isolation.
With the backing of the United States, a defiant Netanyahu vowed a response.
On Sunday, Netanyahu said Israel will fight at the UN and other international forums “against the slanderous propaganda aimed at us,” as well as the calls to create a Palestinian state that he said “will endanger our existence and constitute an absurd prize for terrorism.”
Netanyahu has not said publicly what he intends to do, but that Israel’s response would come after he meets US President Donald Trump on Monday.
Israeli attacks across Gaza have killed at least 83 Palestinians and wounded 216 over the past 24 hours, the health ministry in the enclave said.
This comes as Israel continues its military assault on Gaza City as part of its plan to occupy it, and as the war is a key focus of discussions at the UN General Assembly this week.
At least 388,400 Palestinians have fled from the north, mostly from Gaza City, heading southward between August 14 and September 23, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said yesterday. Hundreds of thousands remain in the enclave’s largest city.
The displaced mostly move to Deir Al-Balah and Khan Younis, which are both “projected to face famine by the end of September 2025,” OCHA added.
Microsoft has terminated a set of services for the Israeli military after an investigation suggested Israel was using the company’s cloud computing technology for mass surveillance of Palestinians.
The move comes after an investigation by The Guardian and Israel’s +972 Magazine reported that Israel’s military intelligence unit, known as 8200, relied on Microsoft Azure to store millions of phone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Microsoft announced on August 15 that it had begun a review of the allegations. Microsoft President Brad Smith said Microsoft does not provide technology “to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians,” a principle it has applied “in every country around the world.”
The company said it found evidence that supports elements of the investigation from the news outlets, including Israel’s “consumption of Azure storage capacity in the Netherlands and the use of AI services.”
Yesterday, President Donald Trump said he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, and that he had spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in the day on the topic.
Netanyahu, who is in the US to attend the United Nations General Assembly and meet with Trump, signed a controversial West Bank settlement expansion plan this month.
Trump’s public message came two days after the US proposed to Arab leaders a 21-point peace plan to end the war in Gaza, which led to an exchange of ideas among the leaders over how to agree on a final proposal, according to a senior administration official and regional sources.
While regional leaders endorsed large parts of Trump’s plan, they made a series of points that they wanted to be included, including no annexation of the occupied West Bank by Israel, a regional diplomat told CNN.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, who attended the meeting with Trump, said he believes the president understands “very well the risks and dangers of annexation in the West Bank.” Saudi Arabia has said that no normalization of ties with Israel would take place until it commits to a pathway to Palestinian statehood.
French President Emmanuel Macron also foreshadowed Trump’s stance, saying an annexation would be a “red line” for the US and would mark the end of the Abraham Accords — a Trump-brokered agreement under which Israel normalized relations with three Arab nations.
The UAE, a signatory to the accords, has previously said annexation would be a “red line” that would “end the pursuit of regional integration.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s flight to the US took a circuitous route in an apparent effort to avoid countries that could enforce an outstanding arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes.
Netanyahu left Tel Aviv on Wednesday evening to speak at the UN General Assembly and to meet with President Donald Trump.
But his flight, which would normally overfly several European countries, instead flew the length of the Mediterranean Sea and over the Strait of Gibraltar, according to flight tracking websites.
The flight briefly overflew Greece and Italy, according to FlightRadar24, but it entirely avoided French and Spanish airspace, lengthening the duration of the flight.
Israel has not publicly said why they took the unusual route and CNN has approached the prime minister’s office for comment.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. If Netanyahu were to overfly European countries that are members of the ICC, he could be forced to land and arrested.
Neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC.
A senior Hamas official has defended carrying out the deadly October 7 attacks on Israel, telling CNN that it created a “golden moment” for the Palestinian cause despite the tens of thousands of deaths in Gaza.
Two weeks after surviving an Israeli air-strike on a Hamas compound in the Qatari capital, Ghazi Hamad highlighted growing international condemnation of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and the spate of countries that have recognized Palestinian statehood.
He was unapologetic about the consequences for Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who have borne the brunt of Israel’s unrelenting attacks on Gaza.
“You know what is the benefit of October 7th now? …If you look to the (United Nations) General Assembly yesterday, when about 194 people opened their eyes and looked to the atrocity, to brutality of Israel and all of them, they condemned Israel. We waited for this moment for 77 years,” he said.
“I think this is a golden moment for the world to change the history,” he said.
Challenged by CNN on whether Hamas shares some culpability – on whether the attacks were worth the thousands who have died in Gaza, the senior Hamas official refused to accept even some responsibility and said:
Read more of what he told CNN.
Hamas in Gaza has rejected Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s statement that the group would “not have a role to play” in the governance of a Palestinian state.
The militant group had agreed in the past to cede Gaza governance to the PA as part of a US-backed proposal for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal. But yesterday’s statement says otherwise.
Abbas was forced to address the UN chamber via video yesterday after the White House denied visas for Palestinian diplomats prior to the General Assembly.
The Palestinian politician condemned Israel’s offensive in Gaza, describing it as a “war of genocide,” as well as settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The politician also said the PA is “ready to bear full responsibility for governance and security there. Hamas will not have a role to play in governance.”
CNN’s Max Saltman contributed reporting