Arab League

Iran’s president has urged Muslim nations to sever ties with Israel – although it remains unclear whether the summit’s measures will go that far.

Doha, Qatar – Foreign dignitaries from across the Arab and Muslim world have gathered in Doha, and observers are expecting them to deliver a decisive response to Israel after its attack on Qatar.

The emergency summit of the Arab League and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) opens on Monday, a day after foreign ministers from the participating states met behind closed doors in Doha to hammer out a draft resolution proposing concrete measures against Israel.

Fury has swept across the region since Israel’s strikes on Tuesday, which killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer, missing a Hamas negotiation team that was meeting in Doha to weigh a United States proposal to end Israel’s genocidal two-year war on Gaza.

At the session on Sunday, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani slammed Israel’s attack, noting that he had regional support for taking measures to protect Qatar’s sovereignty.

“We appreciate the solidarity of brotherly Arab and Islamic countries and friendly countries from the international community that condemned this barbaric Israeli attack,” Mohammed said, adding that Qatar intended to take “legitimate legal measures … to preserve the sovereignty of our country”.

Possible avenues of action

Pakistani Foreign Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar underlined the importance of the summit reaching a “clear roadmap … to deal with this situation”, telling Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid that the world’s Muslims “would be all eyeing this summit, waiting to see what comes out of it”.

Two days after the Israeli attack on Doha, Pakistani Defence Minister Muhammad Asif warned that firm action was required in response to Israel and no country should think it would remain untouched by the Gaza war.

Speaking to Bin Javaid, Ishaq Dar echoed the sentiment, criticising the lack of results from United Nations Security Council discussions.

Asked what practical measures could be pursued, he said: “I think they’ve [Arab countries] already talked on these lines. It’s a sort of combined security force type,” adding, “A nuclear-powered Pakistan obviously would stand as a member of the Ummah [community of Muslim believers]. It will discharge its duty.”

For his part, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called on Muslim nations to sever ties with Israel.

“Islamic countries can sever ties with this fake regime and maintain unity and cohesion,” Pezeshkian said before departing for Doha, adding that he hoped for a decision on measures against Israel.

Some analysts said the summit, which ends on Monday evening, could yield concrete measures against Israel for the first time.

Israeli forces have killed 53 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip and levelled 16 buildings in Gaza City, including three residential towers, as they ramp up an offensive to seize the northern urban centre and displace its population.

At least 35 of the victims on Sunday were killed in Gaza City, according to medics.

Two more Palestinians also died of malnutrition in the Strip, according to its Ministry of Health, taking the death toll from hunger to 422 since the beginning of Israel’s war.

In Gaza City, the Israeli military marked the al-Kawthar tower in the southern Remal neighbourhood as a target, before launching missile strikes that destroyed the building two hours later. The relentless bombardment has forced tens of thousands to flee.

“We don’t know where to go,” said Marwan al-Safi, a displaced Palestinian. “We need a solution to this situation… We are dying here.”

The Government Media Office in Gaza condemned Israel’s “systematic bombing” of civilian buildings, saying the aim of the offensive was “extermination and forced displacement”.

In a statement, the office said that while Israel was claiming to be targeting armed groups, “the field realities prove beyond doubt” that Israeli forces were bombing “schools, mosques, hospitals and medical centres”, and destroying towns, residential buildings, tents and headquarters of various groups, including international humanitarian organisations.

The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini, said in a post on X that 10 of the agency’s buildings have been hit in Gaza City in the past four days alone.

That includes seven schools and two clinics that were sheltering thousands of displaced people. “No place is safe in Gaza. No one is safe,” he wrote.

‘Nowhere in Gaza is safe’

As bombardments intensified, families were once again forced to flee south towards al-Mawasi, an area Israel has designated as a “safe zone” despite repeatedly attacking it.

Ahmed Awad told Al Jazeera that he had escaped northern Gaza on Saturday as “mortar shells rained down”. He described arriving at midnight to find “no water, no toilets, nothing. Families are sleeping in the open. The situation is extremely dire”.

Another displaced Palestinian, AbedAllah Aram, said his family faced a “severe shortage” of clean water.

“Food is scarce, and inside these tents, people are hungry and malnourished. Winter is approaching, and we urgently need new tents. On top of that, this area cannot handle more displaced families,” he said.

A third man said he has been unable to find shelter in al-Mawasi despite arriving a week ago. He described his ordeal as unbearable.

“I have a large family, including my children, mother and grandmother. Not only are missiles raining down on us, but famine is devouring us too. My family has been on a constant journey of displacement for two years. We can no longer endure the ongoing genocidal war or hunger,” he said.

“Above all, we have no source of income to feed our starving children. Displacement is as painful as eviscerating one’s soul out of the body.”

UNICEF, meanwhile, said that conditions in al-Mawasi were worsening on a daily basis.

“Nowhere in Gaza is safe, including in this so-called humanitarian zone,” Tess Ingram, the agency’s spokesperson, told Al Jazeera from al-Mawasi. “The camp is becoming more and more crowded by the day.”

She recalled meeting a woman, Seera, who had been ordered to evacuate Gaza City while pregnant. “She went into labour in Sheikh Radwan and gave birth on the side of the road while trying to find help, whilst evacuation orders were being issued for that area,” Ingram said.

“She is one of so many examples of families who have come here and now are struggling to access the basics they need to survive.”

Doha summit condemns ‘barbaric’ Israel

Meanwhile, the political fallout from Israel’s strike on Hamas negotiators in Qatar last week, which killed five Hamas members and a Qatari security officer, has continued.

Izzat al-Rashq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said the “war criminal Netanyahu is attempting to shift the battle to the region, seeking to redraw the Middle East and dominate it in pursuit of mythical fantasies related to ‘Greater Israel’, which places the entire region on the brink of explosion due to his extremism and recklessness.”

He said the attack on Qatari soil was meant to “destroy the negotiation process and undermine the role of our sister state, Qatar”.

At a preparatory meeting ahead of a summit on Monday in Doha, Arab and Islamic leaders discussed ways to respond.

Reuters reported that a draft resolution seen at the meeting condemned Israel’s “genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, siege, and colonising activities”, warning that such actions threatened peace in the region and undermined efforts to normalise ties with Arab states.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani called Israel’s attack on Doha on September 9 “barbaric” and urged fierce and firm measures in response.

Sheikh Mohammed said that Arab nations supported “lawful measures” to protect Doha’s sovereignty and called on the international community to abandon “double standards” in dealing with Israel.

Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that “silence and inaction” had emboldened Israel to carry out crimes “with impunity”. He called on Arab and Islamic nations to hold Israel accountable for “evidenced war crimes”, including “killing civilians, starving the population and driving an entire population homeless”.

Adnan Hayajneh, a professor of international relations at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera that the regional mood had shifted. “The US has to wake up to the fact that you’ve got 2 billion Muslims around the world insulted, and it’s only the beginning. It’s not only the attack on Qatar, it is a continuation of destabilisation of the whole region,” he said.

US-Israeli relations

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that ties with the United States remained strong, despite Washington’s unease over the strike in Qatar. Hosting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said that relations were “as strong and durable as the stones in the Western Wall”.

Rubio, before his departure, claimed that US President Donald Trump was “not happy” about the Israeli attack in Doha, but maintained that US-Israeli relations remained “very strong”.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman, Jordan, said that Washington was trying to manage the fallout.

“The US is surely going to do some damage control, saying that the strikes on Doha are not going to change the relationship with Israel, but some conversations will need to be had,” she said.

Meanwhile, Israeli ministers have pledged to continue pursuing Hamas leaders abroad. Minister of Energy Eli Cohen declared, “Hamas cannot sleep peacefully anywhere in the world,” including in NATO member state Turkiye.

Another minister, Ze’ev Elkin, said: “We will pursue them and settle accounts with them, wherever they are.”

Israeli media later reported that Mossad chief David Barnea had opposed the Qatar strike, fearing it would derail ceasefire negotiations. A columnist in the Israeli newspaper Maariv wrote that Barnea believed Hamas leaders “can be eliminated at any given moment”, but had warned that attacking Doha risked torpedoing a deal to release captives Hamas had taken from Israel during its attack on October 7, 2023.

Since Israel began its war on Gaza after the Hamas attack, at least 64,871 Palestinians have been killed and 164,610 injured, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry.

Separately, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel’s Ministry of Defence is treating about 20,000 wounded soldiers, with more than half suffering from psychological trauma and estimates suggesting that by 2028, the figure could rise to 50,000.

Arab and Islamic foreign ministers are gathering in Doha after Israel’s unprecedented missile strikes on Qatar that killed five Hamas members and a Qatari officer. The summit aims to formulate a collective regional response, with leaders warning Israel’s attack crossed ‘all red lines’, as Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar explains.

Qatar is hosting Arab and Muslim leaders to plot a course of action after Israel’s ‘cowardly’ attack on Doha.

For the Palestinians who have managed to leave, the decision to stay and risk death or abandon their homes and loved ones is an agonising one. Many more are desperate to escape, but have no way out. So what becomes of those who do make it out? How do they carry on after such deep trauma, while fearing for the families and friends they left behind as the war continues? And will they ever truly heal?

Presenter: Stefanie Dekker

Guests:
Safwat Al Kahlout – Al Jazeera producer
Abubaker Abed – Palestinian journalist and commentator

Foreign ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE had planned the visit to discuss Palestinian statehood and end to war on Gaza.

Saudi Arabia has accused Israel of “extremism and rejection of peace” after it blocked a planned visit by Arab foreign ministers to the occupied West Bank.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud made the remarks during a joint news conference in Jordan’s capital, Amman, on Sunday with his counterparts from Jordan, Egypt, and Bahrain.

“Israel’s refusal of the committee’s visit to the West Bank embodies and confirms its extremism and refusal of any serious attempts for [a] peaceful pathway … It strengthens our will to double our diplomatic efforts within the international community to face this arrogance,” Prince Faisal said.

His comments followed Israel’s decision to block the Arab delegation from reaching Ramallah, where they were set to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The ministers from Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had planned the visit as part of efforts to support Palestinian diplomacy amid Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza.

Israel controls the airspace and borders of the West Bank, and on Friday announced it would not grant permission for the visit.

“The Palestinian Authority – which to this day refuses to condemn the October 7 massacre – intended to host in Ramallah a provocative meeting of foreign ministers from Arab countries to discuss the promotion of the establishment of a Palestinian state,” an Israeli official had said, adding that Israel will “not cooperate” with the visit.

Prince Faisal’s trip to the West Bank would have marked the first such visit by a top Saudi official in recent memory.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said blocking the trip was another example of how Israel was “killing any chance of a just and comprehensive” Arab-Israeli settlement.

An international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, is due to be held in New York from June 17 to 20 to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said the conference would cover security arrangements after a ceasefire in Gaza and reconstruction plans to ensure Palestinians would remain on their land and foil any Israeli plans to evict them.

Israel has come under increasing pressure from the United Nations and European countries, which favour a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, under which an independent Palestinian state would exist alongside Israel.