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World leaders met at a Cairo peace summit on Saturday, aimed at de-escalating violence in the Gaza strip, but could not reach a consensus.
Many European leaders arrived knowing they could not sign Egypt’s draft declaration, which did not mention Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas, according to European diplomats and officials involved in the summit preparations.
“Like any other country in the world, Israel has the right to defend itself and to defend its people against this terror,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a speech at the summit, adding that the defence must be “within the framework of international law.”
Egypt and Jordan criticised Israel over its actions in Gaza, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi rejecting talk of driving Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula. Jordan’s King Abdullah II called Israel’s siege and bombardment of Gaza “a war crime.”
In his opening remarks, el-Sissi said Egypt vehemently rejected “the forced displacement of the Palestinians and their transfer to Egyptian lands in Sinai.”
“I want to state it clearly and unequivocally to the world that the liquidation of the Palestinian cause without a just solution is beyond the realm of possibility, and in any case, it will never happen at the expense of Egypt, absolutely not,” he said.
Jordan already hosts the largest number of displaced Palestinians from previous Middle East wars.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority called for Israel to stop “its barbaric aggression” in Gaza.
“We will not leave, we will not leave, we will not leave, and we will remain in our land,” he told the summit.
Israel has ordered more than half of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate from north to south within the territory it has completely sealed off, effectively pushing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians toward the Egyptian border.
Despite the lack of a summit declaration, European officials said leaders from Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Spain, as well as the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, were eager to show up in Cairo, if only to demonstrate to their Arab partners that they were concerned about civilians in Gaza.
with AP, Reuters
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