Photo: Hussein Malla Associated Press A man carries a safe taken from a building destroyed in an Israeli strike in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on Monday.
Robbie Corey-Boulet – Agence France-Presse and Sofiane Alsaar – Agence France-Presse in Riyadh
Published yesterday at 16:47
- Middle East
Arab and Muslim leaders meeting in Saudi Arabia on Monday called on Israel to fully withdraw from the Arab territories it occupies in order to achieve a “comprehensive” regional peace in the Middle East.
“A just and comprehensive peace in the region […] cannot be achieved without ending the Israeli occupation of all the territories occupied” since 1967 — when Israel began occupying the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan — “in accordance with UN resolutions and the 2002 Arab Peace Plan,” the summit's final declaration reads.
Participants in this joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, hosted by regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, called for the unity of all Palestinian territories — the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank — within a Palestinian state, reaffirming that its capital should be East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel.
The Riyadh summit, devoted to the situation in the Middle East, provided an opportunity for its participants to set out their expectations for the future government of the elected American president, Donald Trump.
During his first term, the latter made numerous gestures in favor of Israel, notably by transferring the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but he also contributed to the normalization of its ties with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan, via the Abraham Accords. Until now, among the 22 countries of the Arab League, only Egypt and Jordan had formal relations with Israel.
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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, declared the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, on Monday. “A Palestinian state […] will be a Hamas state,” he said, speaking of the Islamist movement in power in the Gaza Strip.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Accusations of genocide
The summit participants also “strongly condemned” the actions of the Israeli army, which they described as “a crime of genocide […] particularly in the northern Gaza Strip in recent weeks,” where the Israeli army has been waging a deadly offensive since October 6.
They called on the international community to “prohibit the export or transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel” and condemned “the ongoing attacks by the Israeli authorities […] against the UN.”
The war in Gaza was triggered by the unprecedented attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Israel’s response offensive to crush the movement Palestinian Islamist group, has killed more than 43,600 people, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry, 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 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.
Expectations for the future Trump administration
“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 and Lebanese Hezbollah as “organized terrorism” on the part of Israel.
Earlier, Saudi Arabia's de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman Salman had said that Israel should “refrain from attacking” Iran, amid exchanges of strikes and threats between the two countries.
The Saudi crown prince has called Iran a “sister republic,” a sign of the warming between the two regional rivals, who ended a seven-year estrangement in 2023.
This rapprochement “creates a very different regional environment” than that of Donald Trump’s first term, said H. A. Hellyer, an international security specialist at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
“Long-term war”
A sworn enemy of Israel, Iran supports Hezbollah, Hamas, and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
The Houthis announced a new attack on a military base in Israel on Monday, the army confirming that it had intercepted a missile coming from Yemen.
Hezbollah, which claims daily attacks on northern Israel, has said it is “ready for a long war.”
After Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon 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” by the Lebanese Islamist movement.
In the Gaza Strip, the Civil Defense reported five Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes in Nousseirat (center) and Jabalia (north).