00:00The Assembly will now hear an address by His Majesty Abdullah II Ibn al-Husayn,
00:09King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
00:13I request protocol to escort His Majesty and invite him to address the Assembly.
00:30The Assembly will now be the President of the Assembly.
00:30The Assembly will now be the President of the Assembly.
00:47The President, Mr. Secretary General, Your Excellencies,
00:54every generation believes the challenges they face are unmatched.
01:01Perhaps for us that is true.
01:04We are at a unique moment in history.
01:08The scale of knowledge and the speed of change are unprecedented.
01:14Every day brings another crisis, another tragedy, another emergency demanding our attention.
01:24One study shows that average screen attention has fallen from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to just 47 seconds today.
01:36Of course, a screen is not the world.
01:39But that says something about our world today.
01:44That attention has become a scarce asset.
01:48And where we choose to direct it has never mattered more.
01:54And in this chamber, attention is more than a cognitive resource.
02:00It is a geopolitical one.
02:05It determines which conflicts receive sustained diplomacy and which fade from the agenda.
02:14Whether a ceasefire holds after the cameras leave.
02:18Whether humanitarian suffering remains intolerable or becomes familiar.
02:25And whether the world steps up or scrolls and strolls away.
02:35History rarely catches us entirely by surprise.
02:39More often, it catches us focused elsewhere.
02:46Economic disparity, food insecurity, climate change disasters.
02:50None of these challenges emerged overnight.
02:55The warning signs have been there.
02:59The question is whether our attention lasts long enough to act.
03:06And what we neglect has a habit of shaping our future.
03:13Your Excellencies, we see the cost of that neglect every day.
03:20In my region, from Lebanon to Yemen to Sudan, protracted conflict is deepening humanitarian suffering.
03:29And if anyone had any doubt that a crisis in our part of the world stays there, just look at
03:39the energy and grocery bills of ordinary families from Mumbai to Madrid to Minnesota.
03:47The Iran war has shown how quickly instability can disrupt trade, investment and lives beyond the region.
03:58And then there is Gaza.
04:02For decades, I've stood before this assembly and warned of the dangers of leaving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict unresolved.
04:13But the international community chose to manage the conflict, not confront it.
04:20And every new Israeli violation was treated as temporary, diverting attention from the reality being created on the ground.
04:34Until temporary became permanent.
04:38And permanent became policy.
04:43Of course, this is not the world's only injustice.
04:47But one of the world's longest running occupations forces a basic question.
04:54If international law can be ignored for decades, then what exactly is that law worth?
05:02And how can we enforce it if we won't even call out its violations?
05:11In Gaza, the evidence is overwhelming.
05:14In the first 300 days of the so-called ceasefire, at least 300 Palestinian children were killed.
05:24Jordan's field hospitals have also been targeted.
05:29President Trump has pushed hard for peace and a path to end this war.
05:36But this Israeli government keeps moving the goalposts, continuing its attacks and destruction of civilian infrastructure, refusing to withdraw and
05:48squeezing Palestinians into barely a third of Gaza.
05:54This can no longer be dismissed as temporary military measures or a consequence of war.
06:05Accountability begins when we call things for what they are.
06:10An attempt to erase Palestinian life and impose a new territorial reality in Gaza.
06:17And while the world has been focused on Gaza, something extraordinarily dangerous is unfolding in the West Bank.
06:30Some may think we have seen this before.
06:33Settlements, violence, displacement, more of the same.
06:38But it is not.
06:41Nor is it simply an escalation.
06:45This is a fundamental shift.
06:49What was once a creeping process has exploded into something far more aggressive.
06:56Settlement violence is rampant.
06:57Palestinians are being beaten, shot and terrorized.
07:00Homes, turched, property destroyed, families driven from their land.
07:08And Israel is tightening its grip on more of the West Bank, seizing land, expanding settlements, and pushing the Palestinians
07:18out.
07:20It is time to see what is happening for what it really is.
07:26Because when the language is sanitized, the actions become normalized.
07:33Demolishing Palestinian homes to expand illegal settlements is not law enforcement.
07:40It is forcible transfer.
07:44Appropriating occupied land is not land registration.
07:49It is de facto annexation.
07:53A choking network of checkpoints and barriers is not security infrastructure.
08:01It is a system of subjugation.
08:06Systematic attacks on Palestinian communities are not settler unrest.
08:13The Israeli government criticizes the violence before the international audiences.
08:20They call those responsible a handful of rioters.
08:24They assure us that Israel is a country governed by law.
08:30Yet what's happening on the ground says otherwise.
08:35Israeli soldiers stand by as settlers attack Palestinians, often protecting the attackers or joining them.
08:44They have blocked ambulances from reaching the injured.
08:49They have targeted international journalists who are trying to say the truth.
08:56And when soldiers watch, enable, and sometimes even participate in violence against civilians, this is no longer about a handful
09:08of rioters.
09:11And the question is no longer whether a few extremists are breaking the law.
09:18The question is, is this the behavior of a democratic state governed by law?
09:28What is unfolding across the West Bank is not a series of isolated acts.
09:34It is elements of a single policy to compel an entire population to leave their land.
09:43And there is a name for that.
09:47Forced displacement.
09:49And that is a war crime.
09:55Your Excellencies, if we are to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the world must abandon some illusions.
10:08The first is that Gaza and the West Bank are separate stories.
10:14They are not.
10:16They are two fronts of the same Israeli strategy.
10:21In both, Palestinians are being killed.
10:26In both, the reality on the ground is being remade.
10:31Gaza through destruction.
10:34The West Bank through de facto annexation.
10:40The objective is the same.
10:43To make a viable Palestinian state impossible.
10:49Another illusion is that this Israeli leadership's rejection of Palestinian statehood is a position that might yet change.
11:01It is not.
11:03It is cemented on the ground.
11:06This government has been accelerating settlements and land seizures.
11:12But it began long before.
11:15Since Oslo, the map has changed piece by piece, settlement by settlement.
11:21And the most dangerous illusion that the Arab world never sought peace.
11:30The Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 offered Israel normalization with 57 Arab and Muslim states, including Iran and Iraq at
11:45the time.
11:46In exchange for peace and Palestinian statehood.
11:53For over 20 years, that offer has stood.
11:59The obstacle hasn't been the absence of a partner for peace, but the absence of an Israeli government willing to
12:10accept it.
12:22This Israeli government understands the power of attention.
12:27And lately, it has not liked the attention it's been getting.
12:33When confronted with evidence of wrongdoing, rather than change the course, it opts for distraction, discrediting its critics.
12:45It has also tried to cast this conflict as a war of religions.
12:52Islam on one side, Judaism and Christianity on the other.
12:58It is not.
13:00This is about whether Palestinians, Muslims and Christians are entitled to the same rights as everyone else.
13:17Distractions will not fly anymore.
13:20People across the world are paying attention.
13:24The question now is, will we act?
13:29Because the world's political inaction is not for lack of options.
13:35So let's call it for what it is.
13:39A choice.
13:40A choice.
13:41We have tools.
13:43Sanctions.
13:44Asset freezes.
13:46Embargos.
13:46Diplomatic isolation.
13:48And we have a record of using them elsewhere.
13:54Yet with Israel, resolutions end where they can.
14:00On paper.
14:07This result is a state without restraint.
14:12This government's sense of impunity has reached terrifying levels.
14:18It no longer feels compelled to ask, can we get away with this?
14:23It already knows the answer.
14:25And that is precisely why no one in this assembly should assume its ambitions stop at Palestine.
14:37This Israeli government's expansionist appetite is now a regional threat.
14:45And today, Syria is the warning the international community is choosing not to see.
14:54Repeated incursions, creeping territorial expansion.
14:58New facts imposed on the ground, including around vital water resources.
15:04Step by calculated step, Israel is testing how far it can go.
15:10And every time the international community looks away,
15:16Israel learns that it can go even further.
15:19It can go even further across borderlines and legal limits.
15:24For Jordan, there is no ambiguity.
15:30Any threat to our northern border or our water security is a threat to our national security.
15:41Jordan will not look away.
15:44We will protect our security, our water, and the interests of our people.
15:52And the question here is, if Israel continues its antagonistic approach in southern Syria,
16:01will the international community stand by and let that happen?
16:09Your Excellencies, some things demand our immediate attention.
16:14Others demand sustained attention.
16:17Injustice demands both.
16:21Jordan understands this all too well.
16:24We know what it means to live in a region where one crisis arrives before the last one has receded.
16:32And we know that we cannot choose between responding to the emergency before us and building the future beyond it.
16:42So we're doing both.
16:45We are strengthening connections from the Gulf to the Mediterranean as a hub for trade, industry, and technology while responding
16:55to humanitarian crises.
16:56We are confronting terrorism in the region and beyond while developing our own defenses and remaining a frontline against threats
17:07like dichotics.
17:10We are protecting Christianity in its communities and heritage in its native and historic land while promoting the true image
17:20of Islam against the voices of hate.
17:31And through it all, we will not abandon our commitment to a just peace.
17:38We will continue to support Palestinian resilience.
17:42We will continue supporting UNRWA.
17:45And we will continue to uphold the Hashemite custodianship and historic and legal status quo at Muslim and Christian holy
17:54sites in Jerusalem.
17:58Thank you for joining us today by Dada and to the Bluefield Metro.
18:02Most importantly, Jordan is striving to build a different model.
18:07principled, open, and steady, at a time when certainty is rare and politics can
18:16shift by the day. A country the world can count on, true to our principles, true to
18:24our word, ready to talk to everyone and ready to work with anyone seeking peace.
18:33However, our bias towards diplomacy will never supersede our commitment to human
18:41values and should not be taken for granted or mistaken for weakness.
18:55My friends, whether in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, or anywhere people live with war,
19:02displacement, and fear. Whether crisis began weeks ago or has endured for decades,
19:09our principles cannot change with the world's attention. Military force cannot
19:16deliver meaningful solutions. It cannot feed the hungry, return the displaced, or build
19:23peace. Nor can it repair our planet, manage mass migration, or guide technological progress.
19:32That requires institutions that command legitimacy. And it requires trust. Trust between nations,
19:40trust in agreements, trust that rules will actually be enforced. Destroy that trust. And every challenge
19:51becomes harder. Preserve it. And cooperation becomes possible. And in a world competing for our attention,
20:01we must be deliberate about where we direct it and vigilant about what seeks to distract it. The future is
20:12shaped not only by what we do, but what we choose to ignore. Thank you.
20:24On behalf of the Assembly, I wish to thank the King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
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