Arab leaders were to meet in Baghdad on Saturday at the annual summit of the Arab League, with the war in Gaza expected to once again loom large.
In March, at an emergency summit in Cairo, Arab leaders endorsed a proposed plan for reconstruction of the Gaza Strip without displacing its roughly 2 million residents.
Saturday’s summit comes two months after after Israel ended a ceasefire reached with the Hamas militant group in January. In recent days, Israel has launched widespread attacks in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed a further escalation of force to pursue his aim of destroying Hamas, reports AP from Baghdad.
The Baghdad meeting was upstaged by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tour in the region earlier in the week. Trump’s visit did not usher in a deal for a new ceasefire in Gaza as many had hoped, but he grabbed headlines by meeting with new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa — who had once fought against U.S. forces in Iraq — and promising to remove U.S. sanctions imposed on Syria. Al Sharaa was not attending the summit in Baghdad, where Syria’s delegation was headed by Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani. Iraqi Shiite militias and political factions are wary of al-Sharaa’s past as a Sunni militant and had pushed back against his invitation to the summit.
Some key Arab leaders are expected to miss the talks that come straight after US President Donald Trump’s Gulf tour. Trump sparked uproar earlier this year by declaring that America would take over Gaza and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, prompting Arab leaders to come up with a plan to rebuild the territory at a March summit in Cairo, reports agencies.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas was the first Arab leader to arrive in Baghdad Friday.
The war in Gaza is expected to dominate the agenda, especially after Israel approved plans to expand its offensive and spoke of the “conquest” of the territory. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres will attend the summit, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez — who has sharply criticised Israel’s devastating offensive in Gaza — is expected to address it as a guest.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said the Baghdad summit will endorse decisions that were made in Cairo’s meeting in March to support Gaza’s reconstruction as an alternative to Trump’s widely condemned proposal.
Trump on Thursday reiterated from Qatar that he wanted the US to “take” Gaza and turn it into a “freedom zone”.
Formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, al-Sharaa joined the ranks of al-Qaida insurgents battling U.S. forces in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussain and still faces a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges in Iraq.
During Syria’s conflict that began in March 2011, several Iraqi Shiite militias fought alongside the forces of former Syrian President Bashar Assad, making al-Sharaa today a particularly sensitive figure for them. Iraq, which has strong — and sometimes conflicting — ties with both the United States and Iran, has sought to strike a difficult balance between them and to position itself as a regional mediator.