King Abdullah II: Global inaction on Israel is a ‘choice’

His Majesty King Abdullah II has warned that the international community’s failure to act against 'Israel' has created a “state without restraint,” saying political inaction is a deliberate “choice.”

Addressing the 81st United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, King Abdullah II said sanctions, diplomatic isolation and asset freezes had been used in other cases, but measures against Israel have repeatedly failed to move beyond resolutions.

“With Israel, resolutions end where they began: on paper,” he said.

“This is a wilful ‘choice’ and the result is a ‘state without restraint.’ This sense of impunity has reached terrifying levels,” he added.

King Abdullah warned that Israel’s ambitions should not be viewed as limited to Palestine.

“No one in this assembly should assume its ambitions stop at Palestine,” he said. “Today Syria is the warning the international community is choosing not to see.”

Gaza, West Bank ‘two fronts’

The King also rejected the separation of developments in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, describing them as parts of the same strategy.

“To resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the world must abandon some illusions. The first is that Gaza and the West Bank are separate stories. They are not,” he said.

“They are two fronts of the same Israeli strategy. In both, Palestinians are being killed.”

Warning over forced displacement

King Abdullah II described the ongoing developments in the West Bank as a fundamental shift rather than a continuation of previous settlement and violence.

He said the displacement of Palestinians was part of “a single policy to compel an entire population to leave their land.”

“And there is a name for that: forced displacement. And that is a war crime,” he said.

The King also said that at least 300 Palestinian children had been killed during the first 300 days of what he described as a ceasefire in Gaza, while Jordanian field hospitals had also been targeted.

‘What exactly is international law worth?’

King Abdullah II said the international community had spent decades managing rather than confronting the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

“For decades, I stood before this assembly and warned of the dangers of leaving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict unresolved,” he said. “But the international community chose to manage the conflict, not confront it.”

He questioned the effectiveness of international law when violations are not addressed.

“What exactly is international law worth, and how can we enforce it if we won’t even call out its violations?” he asked.

He added that 'Israeli' violations had repeatedly been treated as temporary until “temporary became permanent, and permanent became policy.”

King Abdullah said preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state had become a firm Israeli policy, while the situation in Gaza could no longer be dismissed as temporary military measures or simply a consequence of war.

“Accountability begins when we call things for what they are: an attempt to erase Palestinian life and impose a new territorial reality in Gaza,” he said.