Leaders of Arab and Muslim countries meeting in Saudi Arabia on Monday called on Israel to withdraw its forces from the Arab territories it occupies to achieve “comprehensive” peace in the Middle East.
The “just and comprehensive peace in the region” can only be secured once “Israeli occupation of all the occupied territories” since 1967, ends, when Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Syrian Golan Heights, as stipulated by “UN resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002,” according to the summit’s final statement.
The joint summit of the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, hosted by Saudi Arabia—a major regional power—called for the unification of Palestinian territories—the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank—and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, currently occupied by Israel.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas urged Arab and Muslim countries to act on the declarations made at the summit to force Israel to end its “aggression.”
In recent press release, Hamas emphasised that affirming the Palestinian people’s national rights, particularly the establishment of an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital, requires immediate actions and practical measures to compel Israel to cease its aggression and genocide against Palestinians
The Riyadh summit, dedicated to the situation in the Middle East, provided an opportunity for participating countries to express their expectations ahead of the inauguration of the government of US President-elect Donald Trump.
During his first term, the Republican president took numerous steps in favour of Israel, notably by relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and by helping to normalise Israel’s relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan through the so-called Abraham Accords. Until then, of the 22 Arab League countries, only Egypt and Jordan had official relations with Israel.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar countered, saying that the establishment of a Palestinian state “today” is not a “realistic” plan, arguing that any “Palestinian state” would be a “Hamas state.”
The countries attending the summit “strongly condemned” the actions of the Israeli military, accusing it of committing “the crime of genocide,” especially in “northern Gaza” over “the past few weeks.” The Israeli armed forces have been conducting a deadly operation there since 6 October, aimed, according to them, at preventing Hamas units from regrouping.
The summit urged the international community to “prohibit the export or delivery of arms and ammunition to Israel” and condemned “the relentless attacks by Israeli authorities (…) against the UN.”
The war in the Gaza Strip broke out following an unprecedented incursion by Hamas into southern sectors of Israeli territory on 7 October 2023, resulting in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
The large-scale Israeli military operation to eradicate the Palestinian Islamist movement has since claimed the lives of over 43,600 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from Hamas’s Ministry of Health, which are considered reliable by the UN. The operation has plunged the besieged Gaza Strip into a humanitarian disaster.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, warned yesterday of a strong likelihood of famine in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave, decrying the “use of starvation as a weapon of war.”
Since 23 October, Israel has been conducting open warfare in Lebanon against Hezbollah.
Israeli airstrikes on Monday killed at least seven people, mostly women and children, in Saqiyat, southern Lebanon, and another eight in Ain Yaqoub, in the north, where a rare strike hit far from the Israeli border, according to Lebanon’s Ministry of Health.
According to an AFP source within Lebanese security forces, the northern strike targeted a Hezbollah member from a family displaced from southern Lebanon.
“The world expects” the Trump administration to “immediately” end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, said Iran’s First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Aref from Riyadh.
He described the assassinations of leaders of the Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah as “organised terrorism” by Israel.
Earlier, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman stated that Israel should “refrain from attacking” Iran amid exchanges of strikes and threats between the two countries.
The Saudi Crown Prince referred to Iran as a “sister republic”—a sign of the warming relations between the two regional rivals, who ended their seven-year rift in 2023.
This rapprochement “creates a regional environment very different” from that of President Trump’s first term, noted H.A. Hellyer of the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
A sworn enemy of Israel, Iran supports Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Yemeni Houthi rebels.
The Houthis claimed responsibility for a new attack on an Israeli military base yesterday, where the Israeli army confirmed intercepting a missile launched from Yemen.
Hezbollah, which daily claims responsibility for firing at northern Israel, stated that it is “ready for a long war.”
In Israel, there appears to be a tactic of alternating between diplomacy and confrontation. After Foreign Minister Sa’ar spoke of “some progress” towards a ceasefire in Lebanon—where Netanyahu’s government has declared its goal to neutralise Hezbollah—Defence Minister Israel Katz ruled it out without the “surrender” of the Lebanese Islamist movement.
In the Gaza Strip, civil defence reported at least five Palestinian deaths in Israeli air raids yesterday in Nuseirat (central) and Jabalia (north), while emergency services reported that at least seven people were killed in a café in Khan Younis, bringing the toll since Sunday night to at least 37 dead.
Source: CNA – ANA-MPA – AFP – Reuters/KST/AGK
