Arab Support
Eight Arab and Muslim states blame Israel for blocking the Gaza roadmap
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Eight foreign ministries put their names to the same page on Sunday, and the page was about Gaza.
The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan, Indonesia, Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and Egypt issued a joint statement holding Israel responsible for obstructing the fifteen-point roadmap drawn up by the Board of Peace to implement the American plan for Gaza. The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz both carried the text.
The ministers called Israel's rejection a direct repudiation of the plan that "jeopardizes its implementation, and fundamentally undermines the collective efforts to achieve a just and lasting peace".
They described Hamas's acceptance of the roadmap as a vital milestone in disarmament and asked the United States to enforce Israel's full compliance with what the comprehensive plan requires. Israel, they said, "bears direct and full responsibility for any consequences resulting from its continued rejection, obstruction, delay or non-compliance".
Netanyahu rejected the roadmap on 9 August, telling his cabinet the army would carry out no withdrawal until Hamas was genuinely disarmed. Maariv reported Likud's answer to the eight states: that the statement was intended to weaken Netanyahu and strengthen his challenger Gadi Eisenkot.
What these eight have actually delivered#
A statement is not a delivery, and the record of these capitals separates cleanly into what has arrived and what has not.
Egypt has hosted round after round of talks, including Sunday's, and runs the El-Arish corridor through which aid enters. Egypt and Jordan have been training the Palestinian police force any second phase will need. The Emirati convoys are countable: 75 trucks carrying 663 tonnes in a single week in August, Emarat Al Youm reported, alongside a 200-bed field hospital.
What has not arrived is the money. The reconstruction fund the World Bank administers for Gaza is still waiting for most of the sums pledged to it, and the eight ministries' statement asks Washington for enforcement rather than announcing new disbursements of their own.
That is the honest measure of Sunday: the largest diplomatic bloc yet assembled behind the roadmap, and a plan that still moves only when Israel agrees to move it.
