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” regional peace in the Middle East.
“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.
Participants in this joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, hosted by regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, call for the unity of all Palestinian territories — Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank — in within a Palestinian state, of which they reaffirm 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 government 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 he had also contributed to the normalization of its ties with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates , 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, speaking of the Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip.
Accusations 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.
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.
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 disaster. humanitarian.
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.
Israeli strikes on Monday evening 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 at 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 Hezbollah member who was part of a family displaced from southern Lebanon.
Expectation of the future Trump administration
“The world is waiting” for the future Trump government 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, 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 rapprochement “creates a very different regional environment” from that of Donald Trump’s first term, believes HA Hellyer, specialist in international security at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Long-term war”
Israel’s sworn enemy, Iran supports Hezbollah, Hamas, as well as 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, affirmed that it was “ready for a long war”.
After the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, reported “some progress” towards a ceasefire in Lebanon, conditional on the neutralization of Hezbollah, his Defense colleague, Israel Katz, excluded without “capitulation” from the Lebanese Islamist movement.
In the Gaza Strip, Civil Defense reported five Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes in Nusseirat (center) and Jabalia (north).
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