The “Iconic Tower” in Egypt’s previously unnamed new administrative capital, an hour from Cairo, glows white, green and red and black – the colors of Palestine. A handshake can be seen on the LED facade. The tallest building in Africa heralds the “Cairo Peace Summit,” to which President Abdelfattah al-Sisi hastily summoned heads of state and government.
Not everything about this conference was as well prepared as the advertising banners along the road that delegations from the airport in Cairo had to pass on their way to the test-tube city in the desert with the newly built conference center. The evening before the summit, the list of participants had not been consolidated and only an outline of the agenda was known.
According to diplomats, a final declaration was negotiated for a long time on Saturday. It was clear that the G-7 states as well as the EU members would not support a paper that only made demands on Israel without mentioning its right to self-defense or the terrorist attack by Hamas. So Sisi ultimately only had to make a statement from the presidency. What exactly Egypt wanted to achieve operationally with the summit at this early stage remained unclear.
Gaza border opened for aid supplies
Key actors for de-escalation and negotiations were not invited or not represented at a high level – including Israel. On the US side, the head of the US Embassy in Cairo, Beth Jones, took part. Special envoy David Satterfield, however, traveled to Tel Aviv on Saturday for consultations. According to information from diplomatic circles, Iran was not invited. The regime is considered an important supporter of Hamas and controls the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, which has repeatedly fired rockets at Israeli territory for days.
Above all, Cairo made an urgent appeal to allow continuous humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. The Rafah border crossing from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula into the Gaza Strip was opened a few minutes before the summit began. This was preceded by days of negotiations between Egypt, representatives of the United Nations, Satterfield and the Israeli government. 20 tractor-trailers with food and medicine on board were allowed to pass.
Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock viewed this on the short message service X, formerly Twitter, as a “sign of hope”, but also demanded that aid deliveries be expanded. According to estimates by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, at least 100 trucks per day would be needed to provide basic supplies for more than a million internally displaced people in the Gaza Strip. Before the war, around 500 trucks a day crossed the border into Gaza.
Egypt’s President Sisi spoke of a “test for our family”. He condemned “the military escalation” since October 7 and the “collective punishment of Palestinians” through Israeli airstrikes. Sisi accused the world of watching in silence as a catastrophic humanitarian crisis unfolded in the Gaza Strip. During a visit to Israel on Wednesday, US President Joe Biden secured a commitment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow aid deliveries to the Gaza Strip, and European states had also repeatedly requested this
But probably the most important point for the Egyptian president was the message that his country would not tolerate the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip – a position that Jordan’s King Abdullah reiterated and the other representatives of Arab states supported. Neither under occupation nor under bombardment will the Palestinians give up their land, said Sisi – which was also confirmed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. A settlement of the Palestinian issue, Sisi said, was “unimaginable” without a just solution and would under no circumstances come at Egypt’s expense.
The government in Cairo has recently been confronted with calls to open the border and ban tens of thousands of Palestinians from taking refuge on Egyptian territory or in the Egyptian military-controlled buffer zone to the Gaza Strip. From the perspective of the Arab states, however, this would be tantamount to an expulsion, which, in their view, would follow on from the flight and expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 – the Nakba.
Baerbock finds clear words about Hamas
Jordan’s King Abdullah said Israel must recognize that “there is no military solution to its security concerns.” He was outraged by the “civilian casualties in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel” and recalled the rules that Muslims had to follow in war. With this indirect criticism of Hamas, he was largely alone among the Arab representatives, who did not even mention the word terror. But he also accused Israel of war crimes.
Federal Foreign Minister Baerbock, on the other hand, made it clear that “the cause of all the suffering of the last few weeks – the suffering that brings us here today – has a name: it was Hamas, which spread terrible terror across Israel on October 7th and committed cruel crimes. ” Like every other country in the world, Israel has the right to defend itself within the framework of international law and to protect its people from terror. Hamas should no longer be allowed to rule the Gaza Strip after the war ends.
Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, France’s Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna and their British colleague James Cleverly made similar statements, calling it the “most difficult situation I have faced in my professional, personal or political life.”
In addition to the demands for humanitarian access to the Gaza Strip and the protection of the civilian population, the greatest unity between the Western and Arab states was in the appeal to prevent the war from spreading. There was also agreement on the call for negotiations and a long-term political solution to the Middle East conflict based on two independent states. Diplomats saw this as a sign that Hamas’ plan to completely divide the West and the Arab states was not working. Baerbock’s visit to Jordan last Thursday was also intended to send a signal that the suffering of the Palestinians is seen in the West.
However, there are also differences between Western countries. In the UN Security Council, the USA blocked a resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire. Brazil had introduced this as holder of the rotating presidency, but did not mention Israel’s right to self-defense. Great Britain abstained, France voted in favor. The call from Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, currently the holder of the EU Council Presidency, for a humanitarian ceasefire was also not coordinated.