Egypt and Jordan warned against any Israeli reoccupation in the Gaza Strip and appealed for uprooted residents to be allowed to return to their homes as the Arab countries' leaders met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday.
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While Israel presses forward with a military campaign it says will last for months, Abbas, Jordan's King Abdullah, and Egypt's Abdel Fattah al-Sisi also restated their rejection of any plans to displace Palestinians from their lands - a risk Egypt says has grown as Israel's war against Hamas has driven most Gaza residents southward towards the Egyptian border.
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Summit of leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Palestinian Authority in Aqaba on Wednesday
(Photo: Chris Setian / AFP)
Jordan has been concerned by increased instability and attacks on Palestinians by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, with which it shares a border. The international community needed to show a "decisive stance" to push for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a statement issued by Sisi's office said.
The three leaders confirmed "a complete rejection of any attempt to reoccupy parts of Gaza, and the need to enable its people to return to their homes", the statement added.
Ahead of their summit in Aqaba, Jordan, Abbas met U.S. 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.
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U.S. Sec. of State Antony Blinken meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday
(Photo: Jaafar Ashtiyeh / Reuters )
"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.
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. Islamist Hamas has ruled in Gaza since 2007 and is sworn to Israel's destruction.
Hostage Negotiations
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 Oct. 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.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said earlier this month that after the war in Gaza, Israel would reserve freedom of operation for its army in the enclave but ruled out a return of Israeli settlements withdrawn in 2005.
The summit in Aqaba was also expected to discuss foreign funding needed to rebuild the devastated territory and a mechanism for electing officials to administer the strip within six months of a ceasefire deal, the Egyptian security sources said. Egypt and Jordan have said that the fates of Gaza and the West Bank should not be separated, as these should be the basis of a future Palestinian state - a position included in the statements after the summit.
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 U.S. 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 U.N. estimates.