Amid growing chaos and escalating Israeli violence against Palestinians in the devastated Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank on the one hand, and the escalation of confrontations on the Lebanese front to unprecedented levels, the United Nations is holding its meetings, starting on Tuesday, where world leaders will discuss several wars, perhaps the most dangerous of which is the Israeli war of extermination in Gaza, climate change, rising sea levels, and proposals to expand representation in the Security Council.

When the UN General Assembly meets on Tuesday, attention will focus on the major wars raging in Gaza, Ukraine, Lebanon, Syria and Sudan, amid an assessment that the world body and world powers have been unable to end the violence.

By all accounts, the world has descended deeper into chaos and turmoil since last year’s annual meeting, when the Russian-Ukrainian war and the Sudanese civil war cast their shadows. Now, this chaos and turmoil has been overshadowed by an Israeli war of annihilation in Gaza, after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, just days after the 78th session ended, and Israel’s brutal war has taken a catastrophic humanitarian toll on the Palestinians.

The UN itself has also had a turbulent year. A record 220 of its staff were killed in Israel’s war on Gaza. Its humanitarian resources, the critical backbone of global relief efforts, are stretched and underfunded, with its main agency for Palestinian aid, UNRWA, facing declining support, increased blockades and persecution in Palestine, and needs rapidly increasing worldwide due to wars, climate change and natural disasters. Meanwhile, its leadership is struggling to play a meaningful and significant role in mediating multiple conflicts, to no avail because of American hegemony.

According to the schedule obtained by Al-Quds, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will deliver his speech on Thursday, September 26, where he will appeal to the international community to take concrete steps to stop the massacre of Palestinians.

“Global challenges are moving faster than our ability to solve them,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said at a press conference last week. “We are seeing geopolitical divisions spiraling out of control and conflicts raging – not least in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and beyond.”

The Security Council, which usually holds a single session on the sidelines of the General Assembly, is scheduled to meet three times this year, on Ukraine, Gaza and the broader issue of leadership challenges in conflict resolution.

US President Joe Biden will address the General Assembly for the last time on Tuesday as his presidency draws to a close. With the exception of the United States’ European allies, most UN member states have been highly critical of Biden’s strong support for Israel and the US’s blocking of multiple calls for a ceasefire during the first eight months of the war.

In recent months, Biden has led efforts, with Egypt and Qatar, to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and secure the release of all hostages held by Hamas. But the talks have stalled, and last week’s cyberattack in Lebanon and an Israeli airstrike in Beirut on Friday that killed dozens appear to have dealt a serious blow to the prospects for a breakthrough toward a ceasefire.

French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will attend this year after both France and Britain skipped last year’s meeting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will make three speeches in person, diplomats said, including at a Security Council meeting on Ukraine, where he is expected to present a new peace plan and renew his appeal to allow Ukraine to use Western missiles to strike military targets deep inside Russia. “It seems like we say this every year, but this year’s meeting couldn’t come at a more important and challenging moment,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told reporters in a briefing. “The list of crises and conflicts that demand attention and action seems to grow and grow.”

Thomas-Greenfield said the United States will pursue three policy priorities during the General Assembly: international cooperation for peace and stability, improving global humanitarian responses, and reforming the Security Council.

Iran's new (reformist) president, Masoud Pezeshkian, who will make his international debut, will try to present his government as moderate, pragmatic and open to diplomacy with the West, in contrast to his predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last May.

But that may not be easy. Iran’s support for a network of militias in Lebanon and Yemen, its backing of Palestinian resistance in Gaza and the West Bank, and recent reports that it is supplying Russia with ballistic missiles for its war in Ukraine are obstacles to defusing tensions with the West that Mr. Pezeshkian will find difficult to overcome.

Richard Gowan, a U.N. expert at the International Crisis Group, told the New York Times on Sunday that the prospects for breakthroughs on Gaza or Ukraine in the General Assembly are dim, “but Sudan may be an exception.” He said, “I actually think the General Assembly could do some good on Sudan, perhaps in a way that it couldn’t do on Gaza and Ukraine. There is a growing sense among many U.N. members that the U.N. has failed inexcusably on Sudan and that it is time to push for more diplomacy.”

Climate change and rising sea levels will join the restructuring of the Security Council and the World Bank as key topics of discussion. For years, countries in Africa, Asia and South America have complained that the Security Council’s core group of five veto-wielding permanent members — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — is outdated and ignores economic powerhouses like India, Brazil and Japan, as well as the entire continent of Africa.

US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said last week that the United States supports adding two African permanent members to the Security Council and has proposed starting preliminary negotiations on the issue. Washington also supports adding seats for Germany, India and Japan, but none of the new permanent members would have veto power.

Any changes to the Security Council would require an amendment to the UN Charter and the approval of all five current members, a daunting task given the divisions between Russia, China and the United States.

In an effort to drive change, Guterres will host a conference on Monday, before the General Assembly begins, with the aim of countries agreeing on three negotiated documents intended to serve as blueprints for addressing current and future challenges related to climate, artificial intelligence, conflict and restructuring UN institutions.