Saudi-hosted summit says Mideast peace requires end to Israeli occupation

Arab and Muslim leaders demanded on Monday that Israel withdraw from occupied Palestinian territories as a precondition for regional peace, while denouncing “shocking” Israeli crimes in war-ravaged Gaza.

A summit meeting in the Saudi capital Riyadh gave the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s 57 nations a chance to speak with one voice on turmoil engulfing the region, more than a year into the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

It came less than a week after Donald Trump secured a second term as president of the United States, Israel’s top military backer.

The summit’s closing statement said that “a just and comprehensive peace in the region… cannot be achieved without ending the Israeli occupation of all occupied Arab territories to the line of June 4, 1967,” referring to the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem as well as Gaza and the Golan Heights.

The statement mentioned UN resolutions which have called on Israel to withdraw from these areas, and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, in which Arab nations offered Israel normalised ties in return for a two-state agreement with the Palestinians along the 1967 lines.

The international community should “launch a plan with specific steps and timing under international sponsorship” to make a sovereign Palestinian state a reality, the statement said.

Hamas later urged Arab and Muslim nations to back up those pledges with action.

“The establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital would require more immediate efforts and practical solutions to force (Israel) to stop its aggression and genocide against our people,” Hamas said in a statement.

The hard-right Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains opposed to Palestinian statehood and Israel’s new foreign minister, Gideon Saar, dismissed the prospect as not “realistic”.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich later Monday vowed to push for annexation of parts of the West Bank in 2025.

The Riyadh summit reiterated regional leaders’ call for Palestinian territories — including Gaza, which is separated from the West Bank by Israeli territory — to be grouped together in a future state.

The leaders also condemned “horrific and shocking crimes” by Israel’s army, saying they occurred “in the context of the crime of genocide”.

The war began with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which resulted in 1,206 deaths, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed more than 43,600 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

– Ceasefire call –

Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Iran, began firing on Israel after the October 7 attack, in stated support of its Palestinian ally.

The regular cross-border exchanges escalated in late September. Israel has intensified its air strikes and later sent ground troops into southern Lebanon.

Addressing Monday’s summit, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said the world must “immediately halt the Israeli actions against our brothers in Palestine and Lebanon” and condemned Israel’s campaign in Gaza as “genocide”.

Prince Mohammed, the Gulf kingdom’s de facto ruler, also called on Israel not to attack Iran, highlighting improving ties between Riyadh and its regional rival Tehran.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati warned that his country was suffering an “existential” crisis and hit out at countries meddling in its internal affairs — a thinly veiled swipe at Iran.- A ‘signal’ to Trump –

Trump’s election last week for a second term in the White House was likely on leaders’ minds, said Anna Jacobs, senior Gulf analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank.

“This summit is very much an opportunity for regional leaders to signal to the incoming Trump administration what they want in terms of US engagement,” she said.

Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref said in his remarks that “the world is waiting” for Trump “to immediately stop the war against the innocent people of Gaza and Lebanon”.

The final statement included a call for a ban on the export and transfer of weapons to Israel.

Despite criticism of the impact Israel’s military campaign has had on Gaza civilians, outgoing US President Joe Biden has ensured that Washington remains Israel’s most important military backer during more than a year of fighting.

In his first term, Trump defied international consensus with a series of moves praised by the Israeli government but condemned by Palestinians.

He recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the US embassy there, and endorsed Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are illegal under international law.