Baghdad (TDI): The Arab League is meeting in Baghdad, Iraq, on Saturday to discuss the war in Gaza and other major regional issues, with the ongoing conflict in the besieged strip expected to dominate agenda once again.
At an emergency summit in Cairo in March, Arab leaders approved a proposed plan for Gaza reconstruction without displacing its nearly two million residents.
Saturday’s summit comes two months after Israel ended a truce reached with the Hamas in January. In recent days, Israel has carried out widespread attacks in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pledged a further escalation of force to pursue his objective of destroying Hamas.
The Baghdad meeting was upstaged by US President Donald Trump’s Middle East tour earlier in the week. Trump’s trip did not usher in an agreement for a new ceasefire in Gaza as many had hoped, but he grabbed headlines by meeting with new Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa — who had once fought against American troops in Iraq — and promising to remove US sanctions on Syria.
Read More: Arab League Warns Trump’s Gaza Plan Risks Chaos
Al-Sharaa was missing the summit in Baghdad, where Syria’s delegation was led by Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani. Iraqi Shiite militias and political factions are wary of Al-Sharaa’s past as a Sunni militant and had opposed his invitation to the event.
He joined the ranks of al-Qaida insurgents battling American troops in Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime and still faces a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges in Iraq.
Read More:Â Pakistan Urges Stronger UN-Arab League Cooperation
During Syria’s war that erupted in March 2011, several Iraqi Shiite militias fought alongside the troops of ex-Syrian President Bashar Assad, making al-Sharaa today a very sensitive figure for them.
Farkhund Yousafzai is an Associate Editor at The Diplomatic Insight.
