Fourteen days on the Israeli brutal aggression on Gaza, Arab leaders attended the so-called “Peace Summit” in Cairo on Saturday to discuss ways to “de-escalate” the war that has killed so far more nearly 4,400 Palestinians.
The hastily arranged gathering dubbed the Cairo Peace Summit that included leaders and foreign ministers from Europe, Africa and beyond, including Jordan, France, Germany, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, Qatar and South Africa.
Jordan’s King Abdullah denounced the global silence about Israeli attacks, which have killed thousands in Gaza and made over a million homeless.
“The message the Arab world is hearing is that Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones,” he said, adding he was “outraged and grieved” by acts of violence waged against innocent civilians in Gaza, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and ‘Israel’.
“The Israeli leadership must realize once and for all that a state can never thrive if it is built on a foundation of injustice … Our message to the Israelis should be that we want a future of peace and security for you and the Palestinians.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinians would not be displaced or driven off their land.
“We won’t leave, we won’t leave,” he told the summit.
Calls for Ceasefire
The Cairo gathering was looking into ways to head off a wider regional war. But Reuters News Agency cited three diplomats as saying that “it was unlikely there would be a joint statement because of sensitivities around any calls for a ceasefire, and whether to include mention of Hamas’s attack and Israel’s right to defend itself,” referring to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood which killed at least 1,400 Israelis on October 7th.
The absence of some Western leaders has cooled expectations for what the event can achieve. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron were not attending.
In his speech Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said his country opposed what he called the displacement of Palestinians into Egypt’s largely desert Sinai region.
“Egypt says the solution to the Palestinian issue is not displacement, its only solution is justice and the Palestinians’ access to legitimate rights and living in an independent state.”
King Abdullah said forced displacement “is a war crime according to international law, and a red line for all of us.”
Source: Agencies (edited by Al-Manar English Website)
