BAGHDAD (SONNA) — Regional leaders were to meet in Baghdad on Saturday at the annual summit of the Arab League, with the war in Gaza expected to once again loom large.
In March, at an emergency summit in Cairo, Arab leaders endorsed a proposed plan for reconstruction of the Gaza Strip without displacing its roughly 2 million residents.
Saturday’s summit comes two months after after Israel ended a ceasefire reached with the Hamas militant group in January. In recent days, Israel has launched widespread attacks in Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed a further escalation of force to pursue his aim of destroying Hamas.
The Baghdad meeting was upstaged by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tour in the region earlier in the week. Trump’s visit did not usher in a deal 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 U.S. forces in Iraq — and promising to remove U.S. sanctions imposed on Syria.
Formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, al-Sharaa joined the ranks of al-Qaida insurgents battling U.S. forces in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein and still faces a warrant for his arrest on terrorism charges in Iraq.
Iraq, which has strong — and sometimes conflicting — ties with both the United States and Iran, has sought to strike a difficult balance between them and to position itself as a regional mediator.
