Leaders, overseas ministers and diplomats from dozens of Arab, European, African and different international locations gathered in Cairo on Saturday for a “peace summit” aimed toward de-escalating the violence in Gaza. But after hours of speeches, they’d little to indicate for the journey apart from a gaping divide, as Arab leaders castigated Western international locations for his or her silence on Israel’s airstrikes on Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“The message the Arab world is hearing is loud and clear,” King Abdullah II of Jordan mentioned in his remarks. “Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones. Our lives matter less than other lives. The application of international law is optional, and human rights have boundaries — they stop at borders, they stop at races and they stop at religions.”
One purpose of any summit is to finish in a joint assertion that each one the international locations in attendance can agree on. But European leaders arrived in Cairo realizing they might not signal Egypt’s draft declaration, which didn’t point out Israel’s proper to defend itself in opposition to Hamas, in accordance with European diplomats and officers concerned in the summit preparations.
“Like any other country in the world, Israel has the right to defend itself and to defend its people against this terror,” the German overseas minister, Annalena Baerbock, mentioned in a speech on the summit, although she added that the protection have to be “within the framework of international law.”
In the top, there was no assertion.
Still, the remarks of a number of European leaders made clear that the hovering civilian loss of life toll and looming humanitarian disaster in Gaza had compelled a delicate shift in rhetoric. While reiterating Israel’s proper to defend itself, the European leaders on Saturday uniformly known as on Israel to behave in accordance with worldwide regulation and urged larger protections for Palestinian civilians, factors that had obtained much less emphasis in the primary few days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 assaults on Israeli civilians.
And regardless of the dearth of a summit declaration, European officers mentioned leaders from Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Spain, in addition to the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, had been keen to indicate up in Cairo, if solely to display to their Arab companions that they had been involved about civilians in Gaza.
In a lot of the Muslim world, the Western response has sparked criticism of hypocrisy and double requirements for its failure to sentence the siege and Israel’s airstrikes on civilians in Gaza — which critics mentioned was the identical type of violence Western international locations readily described as a “war crime” when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Outrage over these perceived double requirements was on show on the Cairo summit, the place chief after chief of Arab international locations mourned the 1000’s of Palestinian civilians who’ve died in Israeli airstrikes since Oct. 7.
“Anywhere else, attacking civilian infrastructure and deliberately starving an entire population of food, water and basic necessities would be condemned,” King Abdullah mentioned. “Accountability would be enforced.”
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who’s essentially the most seen chief talking for the European Union, added gas to these fees with a number of missteps on her watch, together with the unilateral announcement by one in every of her commissioners, later withdrawn, that the bloc would droop assist to Gaza after the Oct. 7 Hamas assaults. She didn’t attend the summit in Cairo, sending one in every of her deputies as a substitute.
In more moderen days, because the humanitarian state of affairs inside Gaza has worsened and the civilian loss of life toll grown, it has turn into clear that European leaders wish to ship a completely different sign — although one that’s nonetheless more likely to sound too muted to Arab ears.
“Collective punishment is prohibited by the laws of war,” mentioned Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Greece’s prime minister, in an obvious admonishment of Israel. “When war must be conducted, there are limits to what can be done to human beings. A total siege is against international law.”
Every Western official on the summit talked about the necessity to guarantee a regular move of humanitarian assist to Gaza, and several other international locations introduced on the summit that they’d enhance their funding for such assist. Ms. von der Leyen has additionally introduced a tripling of assist to the Palestinians. (The bloc is the biggest donor of assist to the Palestinians.)
And whereas the remainder of the world would possibly see a European Union absolutely aligned with Israel, inside the bloc, complaints about Ms. von der Leyen’s staunchly pro-Isreal posture have grown, even triggering a uncommon letter of criticism by European Commission employees members, who’re normally each avowedly impartial and afraid for his or her profession prospects in the E.U. govt department.
The letter, which was addressed to Ms. von der Leyen personally, signed by some 850 staffers and first reported by Euractiv, accused her of a “patent show of double-standards” and mentioned the Commission had given a “free hand to the acceleration and legitimacy of a war crime in the Gaza Strip.”
