Participants in the 34th Arab League summit in Baghdad today pledged to work on rebuilding the Gaza Strip once the war ends.
The annual summit was attended by the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, and the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and among the guests were Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who called for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza and the delivery of humanitarian aid to the territory under Israeli blockade.
Guterres said the UN rejects any form of "forced displacement" of Palestinians.
In March, an emergency Arab League summit in Cairo approved a plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing around two million residents.
In recent days, Israel has stepped up attacks on Gaza, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing further escalation to achieve his goal of destroying the Palestinian movement Hamas.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said that "the genocide in Gaza has reached a scale not seen in any conflict throughout history." In a speech at the summit, he called for aid to be provided to Gaza and that Iraq would work to establish an Arab reconstruction fund in which Baghdad would invest $20 million for Gaza and a similar amount for Lebanon.
El-Sisi said Egypt, in coordination with Qatar and the US, is "making intensive efforts to achieve a ceasefire" in Gaza, citing the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander as one of the results.
He said Egypt plans to host an international conference for the reconstruction of Gaza "when the aggression stops."
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Hamas to step down from power in Gaza and, along with other militant groups, hand over their weapons to the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas seized control of Gaza from Abbas's Western-backed Palestinian Authority in 2007, and attempts at reconciliation between the rivals have repeatedly failed.
The Baghdad meeting was overshadowed by US President Donald Trump's tour of the region this week, but it did not lead to the ceasefire in Gaza that many had hoped for. Trump's meeting with Syria's new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, who had once fought against US forces in Iraq, drew attention, and his promise to lift US sanctions on Syria.
El-Shara was not at the summit in Baghdad, where the Syrian delegation was led by Foreign Minister Asad al-Shibani.
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