Iraq hosted the 34th ordinary Arab Summit meeting on 17 May in the capital Baghdad.
This is the second ordinary Arab Summit to have taken place since Israel launched its bloody aggression against the Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after the Hamas attacks on 7 October 2023.
Representatives of the Arab countries arrived in Baghdad for the ordinary summit one day after US President Donald Trump wrapped up his Gulf tour of 13-16 May, during which he had visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.
Observers and commentators on the Arab world will likely be discussing for some time to come whether this Gulf tour had anything to do with the conspicuous absence of all the Gulf leaders, save the emir of Qatar who made a brief appearance, from the summit in addition to the Jordanian monarch.
What was additionally surprising in this respect was the fact that the outgoing president of the 33rd Arab Summit, the king of Bahrain, was also absent and left to the Bahraini foreign minister the task of handing over the rotating presidency of the Arab Summit to the Iraqi prime minister.
The summit coincided with two major developments. The first was that on 17 May the Israeli army announced that it would begin a major military operation in the Gaza Strip with the aim of exerting the maximum military pressure on Hamas to release the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza. This raises serious concerns about the long-term objective of the Israeli government to establish “permanent” security zones in the post-war Gaza Strip.
The second development concerns Egyptian-Israeli relations. The Egyptian government has withheld granting its diplomatic agrément – the agreement to receive members of a diplomatic mission from a foreign country – to the new Israeli ambassador to Egypt. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has also not nominated a new Egyptian ambassador to Tel Aviv after the completion of the mission of the outgoing ambassador.
In both cases, Cairo made the right, and the only acceptable, decision. They are decisions that reflect the prevailing mood in Egypt, whether on the official or the popular levels, against the Israeli aggression against Occupied Palestine. To put things frankly, the present ruling coalition government in Israel has been running amok for the last 19 months, turning its country and its army into a veritable killing machine for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Muslims and Arabs.
The Egyptian people would never have supported either the granting of the diplomatic agrément to the Israeli ambassador or seeing an Egyptian ambassador presenting his credentials to the Israeli head of state, who on every occasion has lent his wholehearted support to the genocide the Israelis have been committing on a daily basis in Occupied Palestine. The withholding of the agreement and the postponement of nominating a new Egyptian ambassador to Tel Aviv are the least we can do under the present circumstances.
Perhaps the remarks made by President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi at the Arab Summit in Baghdad best captured the Egyptian position regarding Israeli policies in Occupied Palestine and best reflected popular sentiments across Egypt. He forcefully stated that if Israel tries to normalise its relations with all the Arab countries without the establishment of a Palestinian state, no just, comprehensive, or durable peace will see the light of day in the Middle East.
This message was directed at those Arab parties who may be ready to normalise their relations with Israel before the implementation of the two-state solution.
Furthermore, President Al-Sisi dissected the Israeli strategy in Gaza as well as in the West Bank during his speech at the Arab Summit. He did not mince his words, qualifying it as genocide and describing it as a systematic policy intended to “liquidate” Palestinian national identity and force the Palestinians to leave the lands of their ancestors.
It is interesting to note that President Al-Sisi called the Israeli army a “war machine” – which is nothing less than the truth. I would add nothing to this except that the Israeli army has been a killing machine since Israel was established in 1948.
Reflecting on the absences at this year’s ordinary Arab Summit meeting, let us hope that things will be different when the 35th Arab Summit convenes in 2026.
The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 22 May, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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