The leaders of Arab and Muslim countries meeting in Saudi Arabia on Monday called on Israel to completely withdraw from the Arab territories it occupies to achieve “comprehensive” peace in the Middle East.
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“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.
This joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, hosted by regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, calls for the unity of all Palestinian territories – Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank – within a Palestinian state, of which he reaffirms that the capital must be East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel.
The Riyadh summit, devoted to the situation in the Middle East, represented an opportunity for its participants to set their expectations for the future administration of American 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 Arab League countries, only Egypt and Jordan had formal relations with Israel.
The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu is hostile to the so-called two-state solution bringing together Israeli and Palestinian states 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 north of the 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 “prohibit the export or transfer of arms and munitions to Israel” and condemned “continued attacks by Israeli authorities […] against the UN.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023 which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
AFP
The offensive carried out in response by Israel to wipe out the Palestinian Islamist movement left more than 43,600 dead, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health, deemed reliable by the UN, plunging the besieged Gaza Strip into a humanitarian disaster.
The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, warned of the “high probability of famine” in the north of the Palestinian territory, speaking out against “the use of hunger as a weapon of war”.
Since September 23, Israel has also been waging an open war in neighboring Lebanon against Hezbollah, which had opened a front against it in support of its Palestinian ally at the start of the war in Gaza.
AFP
Israeli strikes on Monday killed at least seven people, “mostly women and children”, in Saksakieh, in southern Lebanon, and at least eight others in the village of Ain Yaacoub in the north, targeted by a rare raid such a distance from the border with Israel, the Health Ministry said.
According to a Lebanese security source, the strike in the north targeted a member of Hezbollah, part of a family of displaced people from southern Lebanon.
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 called the assassinations of the leaders of Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah “organized terrorism” on the part of Israel.
Earlier, the leader in fact of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, had affirmed that Israel should “refrain from attacking” Iran, against a backdrop of exchanges of strikes and threats between the two countries.
AFP
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 rapprochement “creates a very different regional environment” from that of Donald Trump’s first term, believes HA Hellyer, of the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Long-term war”
Israel’s sworn enemy, Iran supports Hezbollah, Hamas and the Yemeni Houthi rebels.
The Houthis announced a new attack on Monday against a military base in Israel, with the army confirming that it had intercepted a missile coming from Yemen.
Hezbollah, which claims daily fire on northern Israel, said it was “ready for a long war”.
After Mr. Saar reported “some progress” towards a ceasefire in Lebanon, conditional on the neutralization of Hezbollah, his Defense colleague, Israel Katz, ruled it out without “capitulation” of the Lebanese Islamist movement.
In the Gaza Strip, Civil Defense reported five Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes in Nusseirat (center) and Jabalia (north).
