“A just and comprehensive peace in the region […] cannot be achieved without putting an end to the Israeli occupation of all the occupied territories” since 1967 – when Israel began to occupy the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan – “and this in accordance with the resolutions of the UN and the 2002 Arab Peace Plan,” said the summit’s final declaration.
These leaders of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, hosted by Saudi Arabia, regional heavyweight, call for the unity of all Palestinian territories – Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank – within a Palestinian state, of which they reaffirm that the capital must be East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel.
The Riyadh summit represented, according to analysts, an opportunity for its participants to set their expectations for the future administration of US President-elect Donald Trump.
During his first mandate, the latter had multiplied gestures in favor of Israel, in particular by transferring the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but also contributed to the normalization of its links with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, the Morocco and Sudan, via the Abraham Accords. Until then, among the 22 countries of the Arab League, only Egypt and Jordan maintained formal relations with Israel.
But Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is hostile to the two-state solution, with Israeli and Palestinian living side by side in peace and security, to resolve the decades-old conflict, desired by most of the international community.
Wanting to establish a Palestinian state is not “today” a “realistic” project, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Monday. “A Palestinian state […] will be a Hamas state,” he said.
“Crime of genocide”
Summit participants also “strongly condemned” the actions of the Israeli army, described as a “crime of genocide […] particularly in the northern Gaza Strip in recent weeks,” where the Israeli army has been carrying out a deadly offensive since October 6.
They called on the international community to “ban the export or transfer of arms and munitions to Israel” and condemned “continued attacks by Israeli authorities […] against the UN.
Iranian-Saudi warming
“The world is waiting” for the future Trump administration to “immediately” end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref declared in Riyadh.
He described the assassinations of the leaders of Palestinian Hamas, in July in Tehran, and of Lebanese Hezbollah, at the end of September near Beirut, as “organized terrorism” on the part of Israel.
Earlier, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman said Israel should “refrain from attacking” Iran, amid exchanges of strikes and threats between the two countries.
The Saudi crown prince called Iran a “sister republic”, a sign of warming between the two regional rival powers, which ended a seven-year estrangement in 2023.
This warming “creates a very different regional environment” from that of Donald Trump’s first term, believes HA Hellyer, international security specialist at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Long-term war”
Israel’s sworn enemy, Iran supports Hezbollah, Hamas and the Yemeni Houthi rebels. Riyadh is trying to extricate itself from the conflict in Yemen after supporting the government against the Houthis, but considers Hezbollah a “terrorist organization”.
The Houthis claimed responsibility for a new attack on Monday against a military base in Israel, with the army confirming they had intercepted a missile coming from Yemen.
Hezbollah, which claims daily fire on northern Israel, affirmed that it was “ready for a long war”.
After Gideon Saar reported “certain progress” towards a ceasefire in Lebanon, conditional on the neutralization of Hezbollah, his Defense colleague, Israel Katz, excluded him without “capitulation” from the Lebanese Islamist movement.
