By Aidan Lewis and Nafisa Eltahir
CAIRO (Reuters) – Arab leaders on Saturday condemned the two-week Israeli bombardment of Gaza and demanded redoubled efforts to reach a Middle East peace deal to end a cycle of violence. between Israelis and Palestinians that lasts decades.
In a speech at a hastily convened meeting dubbed the Cairo Peace Summit, King Abdullah of Jordan denounced what he called global silence in the face of Israel’s attacks on the enclave and urged a fair-minded approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. .
“The message the Arab world is getting is that Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli lives,” he said, adding that he was outraged and hurt by acts of violence perpetrated against innocent civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
“Israeli leaders must realize once and for all that a state cannot prosper if it is built on a foundation of injustice (…). Our message to Israelis must be that we want a future of peace and security for you and the Palestinians.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stated that Palestinians will not be displaced or expelled from their lands. “We will not leave, we will not leave,” he said at the summit.
Israel has vowed to eliminate the Gaza-based Hamas militant group “from the face of the earth” over an attack on southern Israel that killed 1,400 people on October 7, the deadliest Palestinian militant attack in the history of Israel.
Israel has told Palestinians to move to southern Gaza for their own safety.
The Cairo meeting is trying to find ways to avoid a wider regional war, but the assembled European and Middle East leaders are expected to struggle to agree on a common stance on the conflict between Israel and Hamas militants.
Three diplomats said a joint statement was unlikely at the meeting due to sensitivities around any call for a ceasefire and the desirability of including a mention of the Hamas attack and Israel’s right to defend itself.
The absence of a senior official from the United States, Israel’s main ally, and other important Western leaders has cooled expectations of what can be achieved in this hastily convened event.
The United States, which currently has no ambassador to Egypt, is represented by its embassy’s charge d’affaires.
The summit takes place as Israel prepares a ground attack on Gaza. More than 4,100 Palestinians have died in the Israeli counteroffensive and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza worsens.
Arab countries have expressed outrage over Israel’s unprecedented bombing and siege of Gaza, where 2.3 million people live.
In his speech, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his country opposed what he called the displacement of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai region.
“Egypt says that the solution to the Palestinian question is not displacement, its only solution is justice and access for Palestinians to their legitimate rights and to live in an independent state.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will not attend, while there has been no official word on whether French President Emmanuel Macron will go.
A senior EU official said on Friday there had been discussions about a common declaration at the summit, but there were still “differences” so it was unclear whether there would ultimately be a text.
European countries have struggled to agree on a common approach to the crisis, beyond condemning the Hamas attack, after days of confusion and contradictory messages. (Edited in Spanish by Javier López de Lérida)
Source: Ambito