DONALD Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi will chair an international summit to discuss the US president’s proposal to end Israel’s war on Gaza in Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday.
The meeting will involve leaders from more than 20 countries, the Egyptian presidency said in a statement on Saturday.
It will aim “to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security and stability”, the statement said.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer said they would attend, along with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sanchez of Spain. French President Emmanuel Macron has also confirmed his attendance.
It was not immediately clear whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or any representatives of the Hamas Palestinian group, would attend.
The announcement comes as tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed north along the coast of Gaza, by foot, car and cart back, to their abandoned and mostly destroyed homes in the Strip, as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appeared to be holding.
Israeli troops partially pulled back under the first phase of a US-brokered agreement reached this week to end Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 67,000 people and left much of the famine-struck enclave in ruins.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said that the ceasefire “ended one form of violence, but the struggle continues”.
“People walk this exhausting, tiring journey back here [in the north] because they belong here. They keep telling us that they belong to this part of the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip, and they will never be uprooted from here,” Mahmoud said.
“But spending a night here is going to be very difficult,” he said. “The struggle to survive continues to present itself in the most aggressive way, not each day but each hour.”
Gaza’s Government Media Office has said that 5,000 public operations have been carried out after the ceasefire came into force to improve the lives of Palestinians in the enclave.
Among them are more than 850 rescue and relief missions carried out by the Gaza Civil Defence, police and municipal teams to recover bodies, remove rubble and secure destroyed areas.
About 150 bodies have been recovered from various areas across the enclave since Friday morning, the Civil Defence said. Separately, Nasser Hospital reported that 28 bodies were recovered from southern Gaza’s Khan Younis alone.
More than 900 service missions to restore water and sewage lines have also been carried out, the agency added.
These missions are being carried out with the bare minimum of resources as Israel’s blockade on Gaza remains in place, restricting the entry of fuel and equipment. During the genocide, Israeli attacks destroyed ambulances, fire trucks and civil defence centres, further crippling emergency and recovery efforts across the enclave.
The mayor of Khan Younis said that 85 percent of the southern Gaza governorate has been destroyed by Israeli attacks, adding that about 400,000 tonnes of rubble must be removed from the city’s streets.
Aid groups have also urged Israel to reopen more crossings to allow aid into Gaza.