The meeting on the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict that took place on Saturday concluded without a final statement. Western states declined to condemn Israel, while Arab states refrained from blaming Hamas for the violence.
Cairo’s “Summit for Peace” aimed to be a diplomatic breakthrough toward achieving a ceasefire in Gaza, but its failure highlighted the “fault lines” between Arab and Western states regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During their opening statements on Saturday, Arab leaders and Western delegates agreed on the necessity of providing aid to Palestinians in Gaza, who were besieged and under Israeli bombardment following the Hamas terror group’s destructive attacks on southern communities on October 7. However, after hours of discussion, they failed to reach a consensus on much else, and the meeting concluded without a formal statement.
Cairo’s “Summit for Peace” was meant to be a diplomatic breakthrough towards a ceasefire in Gaza, but its failure revealed what one analyst called the “fault lines” between Arab and Western states on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In their opening addresses Saturday, Arab leaders and Western delegates agreed on the need for aid to reach Palestinians in Gaza, besieged and under Israeli bombardment after the Hamas terror group’s devastating onslaught in southern communities on October 7.
But after hours of discussion, they found common ground on little else, with the meeting ending without a concluding statement.“The disagreement was over condemning Israel, which Western states refused to do,” an Arab official told AFP, requesting anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. conflict that took place
Instead, they sought a statement that placed “responsibility for the escalation on Hamas,” which Arab states refused, according to a different Arab diplomat.
War erupted after Hamas’s massacre, which saw some 2,500 terrorists break through the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air, and sea, killing some 1,400 people and seizing some 212 hostages of all ages under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.
The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians — men, women, children and the elderly. Entire families were executed in their homes, and over 260 were slaughtered at an outdoor festival, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists.