Arab League summit concludes with Assad and Zelensky in attendance

Update Arab League summit concludes with Assad and Zelensky in attendance
1 / 4
Update Arab League summit concludes with Assad and Zelensky in attendance
2 / 4
Update Arab League summit concludes with Assad and Zelensky in attendance
3 / 4
Update Arab League summit concludes with Assad and Zelensky in attendance
4 / 4
Short Url
Updated 21 May 2023
Follow

Arab League summit concludes with Assad and Zelensky in attendance

Arab League summit concludes with Assad and Zelensky in attendance
  • Syrian President Bashar Assad was welcomed back after a 12-year suspension
  • Ukrainian president tells delegates his country in a state of war – not just a conflict

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told the Arab League Summit on Friday that they must not allow the region to turn into a conflict zone, but reassured the world that “world peace” was near.

The Kingdom hosted the summit in which Syrian President Bashar Assad was welcomed back after a 12-year suspension and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise visit to rally support for his country.

“We assure friendly countries in the East and the West that we are moving forward in peace. We will not allow our region to turn into a zone of conflict,” the crown prince said.

“It is enough for us, with turning the page of the past, to remember the painful years of conflicts that the region lived through, it is enough for us to have conflicts that the peoples of the region suffered from and because of which development was faltered in the region,” he added.




Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speaking at the Arab League Summit in Jeddah. (SPA)

And on Syria the crown prince said: “We hope that Syria’s return to the Arab League will mark an end to its crisis.”

The crown prince emphasized that the Palestinian cause was, and still is, the pivotal issue for all Arabs.

He also expressed hope that dialogue would lead to a resolution of the crisis in Sudan. “Saudi Arabia is welcoming the signing of the Jeddah Declaration by the two parties involved in the conflict in Sudan,” he said.

The outgoing chairman of the Arab League has called on the world to bring the Israeli settlement policy to an end and he added: “The Palestinian cause was and still is the central issue of the Arabs.”

Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky – who had arrived in Jeddah a short time before – told delegates his country was in a state of war – not just a conflict.




Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (SPA)

He also said he appreciated the Saudi mediation for the release of prisoners of war last year.

The crown prince said: “We reaffirm the Kingdom’s position supportive to everything that contributes to reducing the intensity of the crisis in Ukraine, and not to allow further worsening of the humanitarian situation there, Saudi Arabia is ready to continue mediation efforts between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.”

Also on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a cable to the Arab League saying his country would continue to provide all possible assistance to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

He also said Moscow intended to expand its multifaceted cooperation with Arab countries, and remained keen to support efforts to resolve the crises in Sudan, Libya and Yemen.

In his opening remarks of the summit outgoing Arab League chairman Algerian prime minister Aymen Benabderrahmane, praised Saudi Arabia for hosting the event.

He added that the world was going through increased polarization with an energy crisis and face threats to food security.

He said all efforts to solve the ongoing crisis in Yemen would be appreciated.

 

Jordan’s ruler King Abdullah II told the summit the system of joint Arab action required the cooperation between the countries to be strengthened.

And he added: “A fair and comprehensive peace will only be achieved through the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

King Abdullah said the crisis in Syria had come at a high price. “We welcome its return to the Arab League,” he added, addressing the Syrians.

Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said countries were going through a harsh period.

“Preserving the national institutions of our countries is necessary and vital,” he said.

He said Egypt was continuing in its efforts to stabilize Gaza,  and he affirmed the need to establish a Palestinian state to achieve regional peace.




Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi welcomed to the summit by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (SPA)

Palestine’s President Mahmoud Abbas called on the international community to “provide protection to the Palestinian people,” and to “resort to all international courts to restore our rights.”

But he thanked his Arab neighbors for their support.

“We commend the firm positions of Arab leaders towards the Palestinian cause.”

Tunisian President Kais Saied condemned what he described as the international community’s inaction over Palestine.

“There must be an end to the violations against the Palestinian people and the international silence towards them,” he said.




Tunisian President Kais Saied. (Screenshot)

Syrian President Bashar Assad thanked Saudi Arabia for promoting the reconciliation in the region in his first speech to the Arab League in over a decade.

“We are facing a historic opportunity to sort out our situation without foreign intervention,” he said.

Without mentioning specific countries, he then went onto add: “We must prevent foreign interference in our affairs.”

 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman had welcomed dignitaries through the afternoon for the start of the Arab League Summit in jeddah.

Representatives started arriving for meetings in the build up to the summit earlier in the week.

Among the most notable arrivals for the main meeting was Syrian President Basha Assad who was greeted by the crown prince before the pair shook hands and then posed for a photograph.




Syrian president Bashar Assad with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (SPA)

It's the first time in more than a decade that Assad was excluded from the alliance.

A short time before the opening of the summit, images were transmitted around the globe of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as he arrived for what he described as a historic visit to build relations with Arab nations.

Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani was the first Arab leader to leave the summit on Friday afternoon, as others began returning home in the evening.


Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee objects to US veto during Blinken meeting

Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee objects to US veto during Blinken meeting
Updated 09 December 2023
Follow

Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee objects to US veto during Blinken meeting

Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee objects to US veto during Blinken meeting
  • Arab, Islamic foreign ministers renewed unified rejection of Israeli aggression against Palestinians in Gaza during meeting with US counterpart Anthony Blinken

RIYADH: Foreign ministers of Arab and Islamic nations voiced their objection to the US veto that blocked international calls for the UN Security Council to demand ceasefire in Gaza, Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported.

During a meeting with the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, the Arab-Islamic Ministerial Committee reiterated calls for the US to assume its responsibilities and take the necessary measures to push Israel towards an immediate ceasefire.

The foreign ministers also renewed their unified rejection of the Israeli aggression against the Palestinians in Gaza, reiterating the necessity to end the hostilities, protect civilians and lift the siege hindering the access of humanitarian aid to the war-stricken enclave.

They voiced their rejection against attempts to displace Palestinians from Gaza, emphasizing on “creating a real political climate that leads to a two-state solution,” according to SPA statement.

Several minsters participated in the meeting, including Qatari Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Jordan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ayman Al-Safadi, Egypt’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sameh Shoukry, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Al-Maliki, and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan.


Israel strikes Gaza after failed UN ceasefire bid

Israel strikes Gaza after failed UN ceasefire bid
Updated 09 December 2023
Follow

Israel strikes Gaza after failed UN ceasefire bid

Israel strikes Gaza after failed UN ceasefire bid
  • Israeli strike on the southern city of Khan Yunis killed six people, while five others died in a separate attack in Rafah
  • Hamas and the Palestinian Authority swiftly condemned the US veto as health ministry put the latest death toll in Gaza at 17,487 people

GAZA: Israel pressed its offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza on Saturday after the United States blocked an extraordinary UN bid to call for a ceasefire in the two-month war.
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority swiftly condemned the US veto as the Hamas-run health ministry put the latest death toll in Gaza at 17,487 people, mostly women and children.
An Israeli strike on the southern city of Khan Yunis killed six people, while five others died in a separate attack in Rafah, the ministry said Saturday.
Israel has vowed to eradicate Hamas over its unprecedented attack on October 7 when militants broke through Gaza’s militarised border to kill around 1,200 people and seize hostages, 138 of whom remain captive, according to Israeli figures.
Vast areas of Gaza have been reduced to rubble and the UN says about 80 percent of the population has been displaced, with dire shortages of food, fuel, water and medicine reported.
“It’s so cold, and the tent is so small. All I have are the clothes I wear, I still don’t know what the next step will be,” said Mahmud Abu Rayan, displaced from Beit Lahia in the north.
A UN Security Council resolution that would have called for an immediate cease-fire was vetoed by the United States on Friday.
US envoy Robert Wood said the resolution was “divorced from reality” and “would have not moved the needle forward on the ground.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said the cease-fire “would prevent the collapse of the Hamas terrorist organization, which is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and would enable it to continue ruling the Gaza Strip.”
Hamas slammed on Saturday the US rejection of the cease-fire bid as “a direct participation of the occupation in killing our people and committing more massacres and ethnic cleansing.”
Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh said it was “a disgrace and another blank cheque given to the occupying state to massacre, destroy and displace.”
The veto was swiftly condemned by humanitarian groups, with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) saying the Security Council was “complicit in the ongoing slaughter.”
Israel’s military said Friday it had struck 450 targets in Gaza over 24 hours, showing footage of strikes from naval vessels in the Mediterranean.
The Hamas health ministry reported 40 dead near Gaza City in the north, and dozens more in Jabalia and the main southern city of Khan Yunis.


Humanitarian Catastrophe
Following two months of conflict and bombardment, UN chief Antonio Guterres said Friday “the people of Gaza are looking into the abyss.”
“People are desperate, fearful and angry,” he said.
“All this takes place amid a spiralling humanitarian nightmare.”
Many of the 1.9 million Gazans who have been displaced by the war have headed south, turning Rafah near the Egyptian border into a vast camp.
With the death toll of medical workers in the conflict mounting, more than a dozen World Health Organization member states submitted a draft resolution on Friday that urged Israel to respect its obligations under international law to protect humanitarians in Gaza.
They called for Israel to “respect and protect” medical and humanitarian workers exclusively involved in carrying out medical duties, as well as hospitals and other medical facilities.
Only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were functioning in any capacity, according to United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA.
With the civilian toll mounting, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday that Washington believes Israel needs to do more to protect civilians in the conflict.
“We certainly all recognize more can be done to... reduce civilian casualties. And we’re going to keep working with our Israeli counterparts to that end,” he said.
The death toll also rose in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces shot dead six Palestinians on Friday, the territory’s health ministry said.
Israel said Friday it has lost 91 soldiers in Gaza.
It said two others were wounded in a failed bid to rescue hostages overnight, and that “numerous terrorists” were killed in the operation.
Hamas claimed a hostage was killed in the operation, and released a video purporting to show the body, which could not be independently verified.
Hamas rocket parts, launchers and other weapons as well as a one-kilometer tunnel were found at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City, the army said, as it warned residents to move west.


Daesh attack kills seven pro-regime fighters in Syria

Daesh attack kills seven pro-regime fighters in Syria
Updated 09 December 2023
Follow

Daesh attack kills seven pro-regime fighters in Syria

Daesh attack kills seven pro-regime fighters in Syria
  • Daesh attacks have killed at least 385 members of pro-regime forces and 165 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

BEIRUT: Seven members of pro-regime forces were killed in Syria on Friday in an attack by the Daesh group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The attackers were on motorbikes when they opened fire on a military post, “killing at least seven pro-regime fighters,” in the vicinity of Boukamal on the border with Iraq, the NGO’s director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
This year, Daesh attacks have killed at least 385 members of pro-regime forces and 165 civilians, according to the Observatory, which has a vast network of sources in Syria.
Rahman said those killed on Friday included both Syrians and “foreigners.”
After rising to power in 2014 in parts of Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State saw its self-proclaimed “caliphate” waver after successive offensives against it in both countries, which were launched with the support of an international anti-jihadist coalition.
The defeat of IS in Syria was declared in 2019, but the coalition remained in the country to fight against jihadist cells that continue to operate there.
The conflict in Syria, sparked in 2011 by the iron-fisted repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, has left more than half a million dead.
More than twelve years of bloody conflict have divided the country into zones of influence.
President Bashar Assad’s regime has regained control of a large part of the country, with the support of its Russian and Iranian allies.
 

 

 


Palestinian president says Gaza war must end, conference needed to reach settlement

Palestinian president says Gaza war must end, conference needed to reach settlement
Updated 09 December 2023
Follow

Palestinian president says Gaza war must end, conference needed to reach settlement

Palestinian president says Gaza war must end, conference needed to reach settlement

RAMALLAH: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and an international peace conference to work out a lasting political solution leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In an interview with Reuters at his office in Ramallah, Abbas, 87, said the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in general had reached an alarming stage that requires an international conference and guarantees by world powers.
Besides Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, he said Israeli forces have intensified their attacks everywhere in the occupied West Bank over the past year with settlers escalating violence against Palestinian towns.
He reiterated his longstanding position in favor of negotiation rather than armed resistance to end the longstanding occupation.
“I am with peaceful resistance. I am for negotiations based on an international peace conference and under international auspices that would lead to a solution that will be protected by world powers to establish a sovereign Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” he said.
Abbas was speaking as Israel increased its strikes on Gaza. In two months of warfare, it has killed more than 17,000 people, wounded 46,000 and forced the displacement of around 1.9 million people, over half of them now sheltering in areas in central Gaza or close to the Egyptian border.
A senior US official said the idea of an international conference had been discussed among different partners but the proposal was still at a very preliminary stage.
“It’s one of many options on the table that we and others would consider with an open mind, but no decision has been made about that,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Israel launched its campaign to annihilate the Hamas movement that rules Gaza after Hamas fighters went on a rampage through Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Abbas said that based on a binding international agreement, he would revive the weakened Palestinian Authority, implement long-awaited reforms and hold presidential and parliamentary elections, which were suspended after Hamas won in 2006 and later pushed the PA out of Gaza.
He said the PA had abided by all the peace deals signed with Israel since the 1993 Oslo Accord and the understandings that followed over the years but that Israel had reneged on its pledges to end the occupation.

DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS
Asked whether he would risk holding elections given the possibility that Hamas could win as it did in 2006, he said: “Whoever wins wins, these will be democratic elections.”
Abbas said he had planned to hold elections in April 2021 but the European Union envoy told him before the due date that Israel was objecting to voting in East Jerusalem so he was forced to call it off.
He insisted that there would not be elections without East Jerusalem, saying the PA held three rounds of elections in the past that included East Jerusalem before Israel imposed the ban.
Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital, a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Abbas did not give a concrete vision of a post-war plan discussed with US officials under which the PA would take over control of the strip, home for 2.3 million people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel would not accept rule over Gaza by the Palestinian Authority as it stands.
“The United States tells us that it supports a two-state solution, that Israel is not allowed to occupy Gaza, to keep security control of Gaza or to expropriate land from Gaza,” he said in reference to a plan floated by Israel to establish a security zone in Gaza after the war.
“America doesn’t force Israel to implement what it says.”
He said the PA was still present in Gaza as an institution and still pays monthly salaries and expenses estimated at $140 million for employees, pensioners and for needy families. The PA still has three ministers present in Gaza, he added.
“We need rehabilitation, we need big support to return to Gaza,” Abbas said.
“Gaza today is not the Gaza that you know. Gaza was destroyed, its hospitals, its schools, its infrastructure, its buildings, its roads and mosques were destroyed. There is nothing left. When we return we need resources, Gaza needs reconstruction.”
“The United States which fully supports Israel bears the responsibility of what is happening in the enclave,” Abbas said.
“It is the only power that is capable of ordering Israel to stop the war and fulfil its obligations, but unfortunately it doesn’t. America is an accomplice of Israel.” 

 


WHO members urge Israel to protect humanitarian workers

WHO members urge Israel to protect humanitarian workers
Updated 09 December 2023
Follow

WHO members urge Israel to protect humanitarian workers

WHO members urge Israel to protect humanitarian workers
  • The member states expressed their “grave concern about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, especially the military operations in the Gaza Strip”

GENEVA: More than a dozen member states of the World Health Organization submitted a draft resolution on Friday that urged Israel to respect its obligations under international law to protect humanitarian workers in Gaza.
War erupted in Gaza after Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking hostages, 138 of whom remain captive, according to Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory air and ground assault on Gaza has killed 17,487 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory.
The text of the draft resolution is due to be examined on Sunday during a special session of the WHO’s Executive Board convened to discuss “the health situation in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
It was proposed by Algeria, Bolivia, China, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkiye, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Palestinian representatives have WHO observer status, and were also signatories to the proposal.
The member states expressed their “grave concern about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, especially the military operations in the Gaza Strip.”
They called for Israel to “respect and protect” medical and humanitarian workers exclusively involved in carrying out medical duties, as well as hospitals and other medical facilities.
Separately, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters on Friday that Gaza’s health system was on its knees and could not afford to lose another ambulance or a single hospital bed.
“The situation is getting more and more horrible by the day... beyond belief, literally,” he said.
The United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA said late on Thursday that only 14 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were functioning in any capacity.