Desk Report:
US President Trump is planning to meet with a group of Arab and Muslim leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. The meeting will discuss ways to end the ongoing war in Gaza, two Arab officials familiar with the matter told Axios.
The meeting will take place just days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit the White House on September 29. The meeting comes as Western countries continue to recognize a Palestinian state and Israel threatens to “occupy” the West Bank.
The White House has already sent out invitations to the meeting, sources said. The meeting is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday in New York. According to Arab officials, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey have been invited to the meeting.
The sources say the White House wants the invited Arab and Muslim countries to participate in the post-war Gaza plan and even send troops there to form a stabilization force that would replace Israeli troops. On the other hand, Arab leaders will urge Trump at the meeting to pressure Netanyahu to stop the war and not occupy parts of the West Bank.
The United Arab Emirates has already made it clear to the White House that if Israel occupies parts of the West Bank, the “Abraham Accords” (the agreement under which several Arab countries, including the UAE, normalized relations with Israel) could be broken. The agreement is a major foreign policy achievement of Trump’s first term.
The sources also said that Trump will hold separate meetings on the same day with leaders of several Persian Gulf countries—including the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait.
A key topic of discussion at that meeting will be Gulf concerns over Israel’s attack on Hamas leaders in Qatar, the first such attack in the Gulf region. Arab officials said the Gulf states will seek assurances from the Trump administration that such attacks will not happen again.
