Arab neighbours, Palestinians’ Abbas seek to rally efforts for Gaza truce

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, during his week-long trip aimed at calming tensions across the Middle East, in the Muqata'a, in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank January 10, 2024. — Jaafar Ashtiyeh/Pool/Reuters pic

CAIRO, Jan 10 — Egypt and Jordan will try to rally momentum for a ceasefire in Gaza and press to ease the humanitarian crisis there as their leaders meet Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in Aqaba today, a senior Egyptian official said.

Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will also affirm their opposition to any displacement of Palestinians from their lands, he said — a risk Egypt warns has grown as Israel’s all-out war against Hamas has driven most Gaza residents southward towards the Egyptian border.

Jordan has been concerned by increased instability and attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, with which it shares a border.

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“The Arabs are telling the Americans the priority now is to get a ceasefire and push Israel to allow Palestinians to go back to northern Gaza, and ease the overcrowding near (the southern town of) Rafah, which is alarming both the Egyptians and the Jordanians,” a Jordanian official said.

Ahead of the Aqaba summit, Abbas met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is on a tour of the region that is expected to finish in Egypt and has been pressing Israel’s leaders to offer a pathway to a Palestinian state.

The Western-backed Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank and held talks with Israel on a Palestinian state before they collapsed in 2014, while Islamist Hamas has ruled in Gaza since 2007 and is sworn to Israel’s destruction.

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Egypt, along with Qatar, has separately been trying to mediate between Israel and Hamas to negotiate a new ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages that Hamas captured in its surprise October 7 incursion into Israel.

That mediation has resumed following a pause after the killing last week of Hamas deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut, and an Israeli delegation visited Egypt on Tuesday to discuss the possibility of a long-term ceasefire in return for the freeing of hostages, two Egyptian security sources said.

Reconstruction funding

Israel has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians in Gaza since launching its campaign to destroy Hamas, after its militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostages in a cross-border rampage on October 7 that triggered the war.

Arabs are alarmed by indications from Israel that the war will continue for months and that it will maintain a presence or conduct security operations in Gaza afterwards.

The summit in Aqaba is expected to address the situation in Gaza during the war and after it, including foreign funding for the reconstruction of the devastated territory and a mechanism for holding elections there within six months of a ceasefire deal, the Egyptian security sources said.

Israeli strikes in southern and central Gaza intensified on Wednesday despite a pledge by Israel that it would pull out some troops and shift to a more targeted campaign, and pleading from the US for fewer civilian casualties.

More than one million of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents are crammed in extremely overcrowded conditions into the Rafah area, according to the United Nations. Some 1.9 million people are displaced throughout the coastal enclave, the UN estimates. — Reuters