Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday, November 2, called on Arab leaders meeting at a summit in Algiers for increased support against Israel, where Benjamin Netanyahu seems poised to return to power thanks to an alliance with the far right.

In their successive speeches since the opening of the summit on Tuesday evening, Arab leaders have reiterated their commitment to the establishment of a Palestinian state, which will also feature in the final declaration.

But this support sounds like wishful thinking given the powerlessness of the Arab League to influence this issue.

The Algiers summit, the first in three years, is also being held as several members of the Arab League, which brings together 22 countries, have made a spectacular rapprochement with the Jewish state in recent years.

The United Arab Emirates indeed normalized its relations with Israel in 2020 within the framework of a series of agreements, known as of Abraham, negotiated by Washington.

Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have followed suit.

Denouncing the "crimes" committed according to him against the Palestinians, Mahmoud Abbas accused the Jewish state of "systematically destroying the two-state solution and (of) evading the signed agreements".

Mahmoud Abbas did not directly mention the results of the legislative elections in Israel.

But ex-Prime Minister Netanyahu, who seems poised to emerge victorious, has long ceased to affirm his support for the so-called "two-state" solution, involving the creation of a Palestinian state.

"Save Al-Aqsa Mosque"

In his speech, he also accused Israel of seeking to "Judaize the Al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and build the (Jewish) temple that never existed there."

"Save the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher before they are Judaized," he said.

In an editorial dedicated to the summit and reflecting the skepticism of the streets, the main Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds, claimed that the Palestinians "no longer need the verbal resolutions that we have heard so much, but concrete actions on the ground".

He also called on the summit to take a stand "against the normalization sealed by some Arab countries with the occupation state (Israel) by completely ignoring our cause".

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune stressed when opening the summit on Tuesday that it "is being held in a regional and international context marked by rising tensions and crises, particularly in the Arab world which has not known in its modern history such a difficult time".

Algeria is a fierce supporter of the Palestinians.

Algiers sponsored a reconciliation agreement between rival Palestinian factions in mid-October, although the chances of seeing it materialize on the ground seem slim. 

Israel at the heart of tensions between Algeria and Morocco

The security cooperation established by the Moroccan neighbor with Israel after the normalization of their relations has exacerbated the tensions between the two Maghreb enemy brothers, already high due to deep disagreements on Western Sahara, which led to the breakdown of their diplomatic relations in August 2021, at the initiative of Algiers.

Besides the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the situation in Syria, Libya and Yemen are expected to feature in the final statement to be released on Wednesday.

The participants will have to engage in veritable diplomatic acrobatics in the formulation of the final declaration - adopted unanimously - to avoid offending this or that heavyweight of the organization.

In particular, the leaders must find a compromise on how to evoke the "interference" of Turkey and Iran in Arab affairs.

Some members demand that Ankara and Tehran be mentioned by name while others oppose it.

Algeria placed this 31st summit of the Arab League under the sign of "gathering" but several countries, in particular from the Gulf, are not represented there by their heads of state.

Thus the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, de facto ruler of the kingdom, did not go to Algiers, officially due to a health problem.

The leaders of Morocco, the Emirates and Bahrain are also absent.

While several countries in the region are suffering economically from the war led by Russia in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a letter to the summit in which he affirmed that his country was "determined to develop its cooperation with the Arab League ( ...) with the aim of increasing security at the regional and global levels"

With AFP

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