The Rest of the World Report | September 24, 2026 — Evening Edition
The View From Everywhere Else
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77 LEFT THE ROOM
Seventy-seven UN delegations walked out of the General Assembly hall Thursday before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began speaking. By the time he reached the podium, the chamber was largely empty. Only a handful of delegations remained, including the United States. Delegates who stayed offered a mix of jeers and scattered applause. Israeli outlets covered the walkout as bluntly as anyone. Channel 14 called it “a spit in Israel’s face.” Yedioth Ahronoth called it “the dramatic protest.” Haaretz’s own assessment of the speech itself was that it was “repetitive and dull,” aimed less at the world than at Netanyahu’s right-wing base and at Trump.
Netanyahu used much of his address to answer Mahmoud Abbas, who had addressed the same chamber earlier Thursday. The Palestinian Authority president told the assembly that Israel’s policies threaten the “very existence” of Palestinians. Netanyahu rejected the genocide accusation. “Israel didn’t commit genocide,” he said. “Israel prevented genocide.” He called the accusation “the greatest lie of the 21st century,” and argued that Israel’s provision of food and vaccines to Gaza during the war contradicted any genocidal intent.
He spent a separate portion of the speech on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who called Netanyahu “an architect of a horrific genocide” and “a war criminal” in a CNN interview earlier this week. Netanyahu called Mamdani an “antisemitic mayor” who was “spitting in the face of truth.” He accused Mamdani of distorting the facts and inverting the victim and the aggressor. He said Mamdani’s election has left many Jews in New York feeling unsafe, and claimed Mamdani had tried to stop him from traveling to New York for the speech at all.
On Gaza itself, Netanyahu vowed Israel would “finish the job” against Hamas. He addressed the 48 hostages still held, saying “Israel has not forgotten you,” and warned Hamas fighters to surrender their weapons or be hunted down. He said his remarks were reaching Gaza through loudspeakers and hacked mobile phones. He dismissed the recent wave of Palestinian statehood recognitions from the UK and France. The speech came as Netanyahu faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant and an Israeli election later this year, with polling showing his support declining.
🌍 Translator’s Note: Middle East Monitor and Gulf News framed Thursday’s walkout as a story about isolation, not disruption. Middle East Monitor’s coverage centered the scale of the departure and the reactions it drew, treating 77 absent delegations as itself the news, ahead of anything Netanyahu said once he began speaking. Gulf News described Netanyahu facing “an empty hall” and cast the remaining, largely American, audience as the story’s real subject. Neither outlet treated the walkout as a procedural footnote to the speech. Both treated the speech as the footnote to the walkout.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Abbas and Netanyahu made their cases to the same room, hours apart, and the room emptied for one of them. Netanyahu’s speech was substantially a domestic Israeli campaign document and a rebuttal to New York’s own mayor, delivered from the world’s largest diplomatic stage to a chamber most of the world’s governments had already left.
Sources: Middle East Monitor (UK-based, pro-Palestinian editorial lean — walkout figure, Israeli outlet reactions, Haaretz assessment); Gulf News (UAE — empty-hall detail, hostage and Hamas remarks, statehood dismissal); Jewish Telegraphic Agency (US, Jewish community wire — Mamdani quotes, genocide-denial quotes); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Abbas’s UN address); Al Jazeera (Qatar — Israeli election context, ICC warrant background)
TRUMP AND XI, DAY TWO
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded their bilateral meeting Thursday on a cordial note, capping a three-day state visit that began Wednesday with a planeside welcome at Joint Base Andrews. Xi invited 100,000 American students to visit China over the next five years. He announced China would loan a pair of pandas to Zoo Atlanta. Trump recalled US-China military cooperation during the Second World War. Xi spoke of “strategic stability” as the foundation of the relationship, the same phrase Shanghai Institute for East Asian Studies analyst Bao Chengke used to describe Beijing’s aim for the visit before it began.
The friendlier surface sat over real, unresolved friction. The two sides agreed to keep artificial intelligence development “exactly where it is” for now, but China’s government separately dismissed the US safety framework behind that agreement as a disguised attempt to slow Chinese progress, not a genuine safety measure. China backs its AI industry with what NPR’s reporting described as hundreds of billions of dollars in state-directed funding. On trade, the truce the two countries struck this week extends to January 10, 2027, but neither side has actually lowered its tariffs in the meantime. US duties on Chinese goods remain above 36%. China’s duties on US goods sit near 30%.
Taiwan came up as expected but produced no public resolution. A $14 billion US arms package to Taipei remains on hold, and Al Jazeera’s reporting on the summit’s agenda noted China was expected to press the issue without any indication Washington would change course. A third thread ran through the talks: China is Iran’s largest trading partner, and the US naval blockade on Iranian ports is cutting into Chinese oil imports from Iran. Washington raised the possibility that Beijing could use its leverage with Tehran to help end that war, though nothing was announced on that front either.
🌍 Translator’s Note: Al Jazeera’s framing of the summit was more skeptical than the friendlier tone of the arrival ceremony itself. Its reporting described the visit as “a reprieve in hostilities” between the two countries, explicitly framing the question as whether that posture “can hold” against each side’s competing interests, and describing both governments as continuing “to test one another” even while talking. That is a different emphasis than the pageantry-forward framing of Wednesday’s arrival, which centered the red carpet, the honor guard and the flyover. Thursday’s Al Jazeera coverage treated the friendliness as the thing to be skeptical of.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Two pandas and a student exchange program are real, but they are not the substance of this relationship. Tariffs above 36% are still in place on both sides. The AI agreement freezes the status quo rather than resolving anything. Taiwan arms sales remain stuck. The visit produced warmth without producing resolution on any of the three issues that actually divide the two countries.
Sources: NPR (US — student exchange pledge, panda loan, “strategic stability” quote, AI funding detail, tariff percentages); Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — Taiwan arms package detail, Iran/China oil angle, “reprieve in hostilities” framing); Taipei Times (Taiwan — Bao Chengke “strategic stability” quote, summit agenda)
A NEW WAR ALLIANCE IN ETHIOPIA
Seven armed Ethiopian factions, including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, announced this week they have formed a coalition called the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival. Its stated goal is removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government. The alliance brings together groups with a documented history of fighting each other, not just the federal government, which makes the coalition itself as significant as anything it has done so far.
Fighting escalated fast. A TPLF official described the situation as having become “a full war” within 24 hours of the first clashes this week. Federal forces have responded with infantry, mechanized units and drone strikes. Tigrayan forces have seized an airport and captured Abala, a district capital in neighboring Afar region. Ethiopian Airlines suspended flights to Tigray because of the disruption.
The regional bloc IGAD has called for a ceasefire and a return to dialogue. The UN has expressed concern specifically about the new coalition’s formation and about the use of drones in the fighting. Eritrea has repeatedly denied allegations that it is backing one side. Those allegations persist because of Eritrea’s own difficult history with both the Ethiopian federal government and Tigrayan forces.
The stakes extend beyond Ethiopia’s borders. Sudan’s own civil war sits on Ethiopia’s western frontier, and Ethiopian-Eritrean relations have been deteriorating independently of this new fighting. A collapse into full-scale war in Ethiopia would unfold next to one of Africa’s worst active conflicts, with a shared border and shared displacement pressure.
🇺🇸 What American readers need to know: Ethiopia is Africa’s second-most populous country. It already fought a civil war between 2020 and 2022 that killed hundreds of thousands of people. That country’s war is reassembling itself into a new configuration this week, and it has drawn almost no American coverage. This is not a return to the old front lines. It is a new alliance of former enemies aimed at the government itself.
Sources: Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent — alliance formation, TPLF quote, military details, IGAD and UN response, Eritrea denials); NPR (US confirmation)
BRIEFS
Israeli strikes killed at least five Palestinians in Gaza on Thursday, including one man in a vehicle south of Gaza City. A second strike hit the vehicle used to carry his body away, critically wounding several more people and destroying the remains. Since the October 2025 “ceasefire” began, Israeli fire has killed at least 1,408 Palestinians and wounded 4,916, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Sources: Antiwar.com (citing WAFA and Gaza’s Health Ministry)
Yemeni government forces said they repelled coordinated Houthi attacks in southwestern Taiz on Thursday, killing and wounding dozens of Houthi fighters near a road connecting three governorates. The World Health Organization has documented 674 people killed and nearly 3,000 injured in the fighting since August, with more than 158,000 people displaced. Source: Al Jazeera (Qatar, state-funded/editorially independent)
NUMBERS AT PUBLICATION
🇮🇷 Iran: 3,684 killed
🇱🇧 Lebanon: 8,953 killed, 30,643 wounded
🇮🇱 Israel: 1,200+ killed, ~5,400 wounded
🇺🇸 US military: 23 killed, 794 wounded
🇵🇸 Gaza: 74,050+ killed (total war), 4,916 wounded (since ceasefire)
🇵🇸 West Bank: 322 killed (incl. 74 children), 5,927 wounded (incl. 946 children) since January 2025
🛢️ Brent crude: $107.10/barrel
⛽ US gas: $4.48/gallon
Sources: HRANA (Iran); Lebanon MOPH; INSS (Israel); DCAS (US); OCHA (West Bank); gazacasualties.org (Gaza total); Gaza Health Ministry via WAFA (Gaza since ceasefire); OilPrice.com (Brent); AAA (US gas).
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1789