ALGIERS —
Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas urged Arab leaders Wednesday to boost
support in the face of “crimes” by Israel, where veteran hawk Benjamin
Netanyahu looks set to clinch an election victory.
اضافة اعلان
Abbas was
addressing the first Arab League summit since the UAE normalized ties with
Israel in 2020, sparking a string of similar moves that have divided the
region.
Without
referring to the Israeli election, the
Palestinian Authority (PA) president
said Israel was “systematically destroying the two-state solution and throwing
away agreements it has signed”.
He urged Arab
leaders to “save the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher before
they’re Judaized”, referring to sensitive religious sites in the Old City of
Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
On Tuesday,
summit host Algerian President
Abdelmadjid Tebboune told the opening session
that “our central and primary cause remains the Palestinian cause.”
Tebboune also
called for unity to face escalating “tensions and crises”, that he said were
the worst in the Arab world’s recent history.
The 22-state
Arab League has for decades been a forum for strident statements of solidarity
with the Palestinians, but has had little real impact in its 77 years of
existence.
Leaders
addressing Wednesday’s session took turns in declaring support for a
Palestinian state, a sentiment which will figure in the summit’s final
resolution.
Abbas listed the
crimes against his people since Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration expressed
support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
‘Concrete actions’ not statements
Abbas avoided directly mentioning Tuesday’s Israeli election, that
looks set to deliver a comeback to power by
Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving
prime minister, who has long since dropped any support for a two-state
solution.
Netanyahu’s
possible return comes after Israel signed a string of normalization deals
mediated by the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
The accord with
the UAE was quickly followed by another with Bahrain, a provisional deal with
Sudan and a re-launch of ties with Morocco, helping rekindle the kingdom’s
decades-old rivalry with neighboring Algeria.
Algiers remains
a steadfast supporter of the Palestinians.
In his speech on
Tuesday, Tebboune did not directly mention the normalization deals, but
insisted that a 2002 Arab initiative — proposing peace in exchange for Israel’s
withdrawal from land it occupied during the 1967 Six Day War — was the only way
to reach “a just and comprehensive peace”.
He also called
for a UN General Assembly session to give full membership to the state of
Palestine.
But an editorial
in the Palestinian
Al-Quds newspaper said Palestinians “don’t need any more
statements, of which we’ve heard many, but concrete actions on the ground”.
It also called
for the summit to take a stand “against Arab countries’ normalization deals
with the occupier (Israel) which totally ignore our cause”.
The final
resolution of the summit is expected to include diplomatic somersaults to avoid
upsetting any members of the deeply divided bloc.
The conflicts in
Syria, Libya, and Yemen are also expected to feature, while wording around
Turkish and Iranian “interference” in the region is another landmine to be
carefully navigated.
Divisions in the
Arab League are underlined by the absence of several key figures, notably Saudi
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reported to have an ear infection, Morocco’s
King Mohammed VI, and Bahrain’s leader.
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