TEL-AVIV, September 29 (RIA Novosti) - Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has left for the US to address the UN General Assembly Monday, pledging to refute Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's accusations of genocide and warn international community of threats from Iran's nuclear program.
"In my address to the UN General Assembly, I will refute all of the lies, being directed at us, and I will tell the truth about our state and about the heroic soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world," The Times of Israel reported Netanyahu as saying Sunday, before boarding a plane to New York.
Netanyahu also mentioned he would warn the international community on the threat, related to Iran's nuclear program and the possibility of radical Islamist groups to gain nuclear weapons, Israel Hayom newspaper reported Sunday.
After the address to the UN General Assembly, Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with US President Barack Obama, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his speech at the United Nations on Friday called 2014 "a year of a new war of genocide, perpetrated against the Palestinian people," and said that conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was "a series of absolute war crimes carried out before the eyes and ears of the entire world, moment by moment." Abbas also accused Israel of undermining peace talks and waging a "war of genocide" in Gaza. He claimed that Palestinians will live in a "most abhorrent form of apartheid" under Israeli rule.
New escalation of the continuous Israeli-Palestinian conflict started in June this year after Benjamin Netanyahu put the blame for the death of three Israeli schoolboys on Hamas, a radical Palestinian Islamic organization and the de facto authority in Gaza. In response, Israel launched operation "Protective Edge" on 8 July that was suspended only on 13 August, due to the mediation attempts of Egypt. On August 26 the Palestinian Authority and Israel with the mediation of the Egyptian government agreed to an open-ended truce.
In November Netanyahu severely criticized the interim Iranian nuclear pact between Iran and six world powers and called it a "historic mistake", as the pact curbs, but does not prohibit Iranian nuclear program. Israel is now seeking to toughen the provisions of the pact and deny Iran's right to produce nuclear material.
