- ARAB NEWS
- 29 Apr 2024
Since 1975
AMMAN: Jordan voiced hope Wednesday that a summit this week involving US President Joe Biden would breathe new life into the Middle East peace process following major fighting between Israel and Hamas.
Biden will Wednesday visit Israel to show solidarity after Hamas attacks as it prepares a ground offensive in Gaza before heading to Jordan, a key US partner, for a four-way summit.
In Amman, Biden will meet King Abdullah II of Jordan and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt — the first two Arab countries to make peace with Israel — as well as Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, a Hamas foe based in the West Bank.
The discussions would focus on ways to halt “the ongoing war in Gaza and ways to find a political horizon that would allow the revival of the peace process,” an official statement said.
King Abdullah will also meet separately with the three leaders on “how to ensure the entry of humanitarian and relief aid into the (Gaza) Strip.”
The monarch on Tuesday warned against trying to push Palestinian refugees into Egypt or Jordan, adding that the humanitarian situation must to be dealt with inside Gaza and the West Bank.
Amman, which lost the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to Israel during the 1967 Middle East war is worried widening violence could have repercussions, with a large percentage of Jordan’s population made up of Palestinians.
President Biden’s visit to the region, his second to a conflict zone this year following his trip to Ukraine in February, carries risks. His goal will be to show American solidarity with Netanyahu while trying to avoid a broader regional war involving Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and Syria.
The United States has stationed a carrier strike group in the eastern Mediterranean in a show of force for Israel and a second is on the way.
Biden also wants to avert a humanitarian calamity in Gaza where authorities say more than 2,800 people have already been killed in Israeli bombardment over the last week.
Hundreds of tons of aid from several countries have been waiting in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula for days pending a deal for its safe delivery to Gaza and the evacuation of some foreign passport holders through the Rafah crossing.
“He’ll make it clear that we want to continue working with all our partners in the region, including Israel, to get humanitarian assistance in and provide some kind of safe passage for civilians to get out,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby.
Biden and Netanyahu, thrown into a wartime partnership despite deep political differences on the way forward in the Middle East, have joined forces.
Biden has given Israel full-throated support while stressing the need to head off a massive humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Their face-to-face meeting, after holding several phone calls since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, will allow Biden to privately discuss concerns and possible red lines in the coming Gaza invasion.
Biden will also get an update on the scores of hostages taken by Hamas.
The State Department has said 29 citizens of the United States were killed in the Hamas attacks in Israel, with 15 citizens and one lawful permanent resident unaccounted for.
Israel has vowed to annihilate the Hamas movement.
Biden will make clear that “Israel has the right and indeed the duty to defend its people from Hamas and other terrorists and to prevent future attacks,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters after hours of talks with Israel’s war cabinet in Tel Aviv.
He said Israel would brief Biden on its war aims and strategy and on how it will conduct operations “in a way that minimizes civilian casualties and enables humanitarian assistance to flow to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not benefit Hamas.”
Efforts to create a Palestinian state have been at a standstill for years with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government firmly opposed.
The Biden administration has backed calls for a two-state solution but has done little diplomatically to advance the goal, seeing little prospect of success.
(With AFP and Reuters)
