Syria’s leader invited to Arab League meeting on Gaza

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa received an invitation on Sunday to attend an Egyptian-hosted Arab League meeting on Gaza, the Syrian presidency said.

“The president of the Syrian Arab Republic, Mr Ahmed al-Sharaa, received an official invitation from the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt... to participate in the extraordinary Arab League summit” on March 4 in Cairo, the presidency statement said.

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The meeting was called in response to a widely criticised plan by US President Donald Trump, who has said his government should take over the war-battered Gaza Strip and redevelop it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Its Palestinian inhabitants, according to Trump’s plan, would move elsewhere, including to Egypt and Jordan.

Trump’s plan sparked an outcry from Arab governments as well as other world leaders, and the United Nations warned against “ethnic cleansing” in the Palestinian territory.

Al-Sharaa has called Trump’s plan “a very huge crime that cannot happen.”

Syria under former president Bashar al-Assad was suspended from the Arab League in 2011 over his brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests which spiraled into a devastating war.

Damascus was allowed to return to the regional bloc in 2023.

Late last year, a coalition spearheaded by al-Sharaa’s extremist group “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” toppled al-Assad in a lightning offensive. He was named interim president soon after.

Egypt backed al-Assad until the end, even as al-Sharaa’s “Hayat Tahrir al-Sham” closed in on Damascus, though it has engaged carefully with Syria since his fall.

The Cairo meeting next month would be the first time al-Sharaa represents Syria in the Arab League.

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