Two weeks after the Hamas attacks on Israel, followed by the bombing of the siege of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army, Egypt convened a Cairo peace summit meeting on the situation in Palestine, to which are invited 31 States and international organizations.
The purpose of the meeting initiated by President Abdelfatah Al Sissi is to “open the debate on the means to relaunch the peace process which has been at a standstill for years”. Invited to this meeting, Algeria declined the invitation.
The summit took place this Saturday, October 21 in Cairo with a low level of representation, in the presence of Egyptian Presidents Abdelfatah Al Sissi and Palestinian Mahmoud Abbas, the Secretary General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres, the King of Jordan, the President of the Council European Charles Michel and the Emir of Qatar.
The other heads of state invited, both Arab and Western, were mostly represented by their foreign ministers.
This disaffection alone reflects the skepticism of the region’s leaders – and even Westerners – regarding the possibility of achieving a convincing result through a meeting convened in haste.
Relaunching the peace process in the Middle East seems like an illusory objective in the current state of affairs. The countries of the Arab League, meeting at the level of foreign ministers last Sunday, could not agree on how to put an end to Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip.
Western countries, several of which are invited to the Cairo meeting, refuse to condemn the Israeli bombings or call for their cessation.
Last week, France and the United States blocked a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
In the Palestinian question, there are priorities and the current one is to stop the massacre of the civilian population of Gaza and to relieve their suffering.
Arab countries and the Palestinian cause: an accumulation of compromises and betrayals
The accumulation of compromises and betrayals over the years has reduced Arab leaders to begging for responsibility for the fallout from Israeli policy, relegating the essential, that is to say the end, to the background. colonization and the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In their speeches today in Cairo, the Egyptian and Palestinian presidents, for example, focused on the refusal to move the population of Gaza and the modalities of bringing in humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing.
The summit ended in resounding failure because of Western countries whose representatives traveled to Cairo to defend Israel. They demanded the inclusion in the final communiqué of a clear condemnation of the Hamas attacks and a call for the release of some 200 Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian movement. Which the Arab countries refused, according to AFP.
The Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
The differences and divisions in the Arab ranks are deep and old and it is not a meeting of a few hours that can iron them out.
The very notion of resistance of the Palestinian people is subject to interpretation, depending on connections with one or other of the Palestinian factions or with Western powers.
At the last meeting of the Arab League, some countries tried to put the Israeli occupation forces and the Hamas movement on an equal footing.
But this is not the only divergence. The Arab world is de facto divided between those who have taken the step towards normalization, those who are preparing to do so and those who see it as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.
Six Arab countries officially recognize Israel (Egypt since 1978, Jordan since 1994, Morocco, Bahrain, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates since 2020).
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS) announced last September that his country was close to a normalization agreement with Israel. However, current events have forced him to freeze the process.
The “free” normalization offered to Israel constitutes a repudiation of the 2022 peace plan, which was adopted and accepted by all Arab heads of state.
The plan proposes the recognition of Israel by the Arab States in a collective approach in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders and with Al Quds-East as its capital.
Of the territories before 1967, all that remains today, under the effect of colonization, are scattered areas in which it is unthinkable to establish a viable Palestinian state. A state of affairs implicitly endorsed by the normalization camp.
