US President Donald Trump on Tuesday met leaders from the Arab and Muslim world on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City to discuss ending the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, repeatedly calling it his “most important meeting.”
“We want to end the war in Gaza. We’re going to end it. Maybe we can end it right now,” Trump told the press at the start of the meeting.
“This is my most important meeting,” he continued. “But this is the one that’s very important to me because we’re going to end something that should have probably never started.”
Leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan were in attendance. Trump said the sit-down included “all of the big players except for Israel but that’s going to be next,” in apparent reference to his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House next week.
Trump also complimented Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s speech to the General Assembly earlier, in which Subianto said peace requires guaranteeing Israel’s security.
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Following the meeting, Trump simply waved to gathered news reporters without commenting on how things went, and there was no immediate comment from the White House. Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff offered a thumbs-up when asked how the meeting had fared.
Both Trump and Witkoff had been expected to unveil the US plan for the post-war management of Gaza that former UK prime minister Tony Blair has been developing in recent months and that was revealed last week in The Times of Israel.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described the meeting with Trump as “very fruitful.”
NATO member Turkey has harshly criticized Israel’s attacks in Gaza against Hamas — which Erdogan is a leading backer of — and claim they amount to genocide, a charge that Jerusalem strongly rejects. Turkey has halted all trade with Israel, urged international measures against it, and demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters, Erdogan said a joint declaration from the meeting would be published and that he was “pleased” with the outcomes of the meeting, but did not elaborate.
Emirati state news agency WAM meanwhile reported that the meeting focused on ending the ongoing war in Gaza and reaching a permanent ceasefire. The news agency said releasing all hostages and taking steps toward addressing the worsening humanitarian crisis in the war-torn enclave were also discussed as priorities.
Trump ‘on the side of Israel’
Meeting at the UN earlier in the day with French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country was among several to recognize a Palestinian state a day earlier during a Franco-Saudi conference on promoting a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Trump told reporters that he and the leaders of the Muslim nations “we’re going to see if we can do something about” ending the Gaza war.
“We want to stop that. We want to get our hostages back, or their hostages back,” he said, referring to the captives taken abducted by Hamas-led terrorists during the October 7, 2023, attack against Israel that started the Gaza war.
While sitting alongside Macron, Trump also declared: “I’m on the side of Israel. I’ve been on the side of Israel, really, my whole life, and we’re going to get a solution, and it’s going to be a solution that’s good for everybody.”
Asked about Macron’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood, Trump echoed his speech to the UN General Assembly. “I think it honors Hamas and you can’t do that because of October 7. You just can’t do that.”
“Nobody forgets the 7th of October,” Macron said in response.
“But after almost two years of war, what is the result,” Macron said, adding: “This is not the right the right way to proceed.”
Macron also said Israel’s killing of Hamas leaders was a “great achievement” but “you have as many Hamas fighters as you had the first day. So it doesn’t work to dismantle Hamas. This is not the right way to proceed. So we need a full-fledged process.”
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