Egypt will host an international summit in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh on Monday to finalize an agreement aimed at ending the war in Gaza, an Egyptian presidential spokesperson said on Saturday.
The summit will be attended by more than 20 leaders, including US President Donald Trump, the spokesperson added in a statement.
Trump and his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sissi will chair the event, the announcement added.
Cairo said the summit 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 confab, according to Egypt, is designed to finalize an agreement aimed at ending the war in Gaza and rally support for the second phase of Trump’s peace plan that looks to disarm Hamas and create a new governing body in the Strip.
However, it is unclear how the summit itself can formally end the war. Israel has said it will not agree to end the war until it is satisfied that Hamas no longer poses and threat and has no part in the rule of Gaza.
Israel is not attending the summit, and the Prime Minister’s Office has not explained its absence.
Hamas also will not attend, according to officials in the terror group, and neither will the Palestinian Authority, according to reports.
The summit was first reported by Axios Friday, which said Trump had organized the event and that invitations had been extended to leaders or foreign ministers from Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Indonesia.
The outlet reported that the US State Department issued official invitations to the leaders’ summit, and has significantly expanded the list of invitees to include Spain, Japan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Hungary, India, El Salvador, Cyprus, Greece, Bahrain, Kuwait and Canada.
Iran was also invited, according to one source cited by an Axios reporter on X.
Several leaders have confirmed their attendance, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Representing international organizations, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and European Council President Antonio Costa will also attend.
Hossam Badran, a Hamas political bureau member, told AFP in an interview that the group “will not be involved.”
Hamas “acted principally through… Qatari and Egyptian mediators” during previous talks on Gaza, he said.
The Palestinian Authority will also not participate in the summit, and a senior PA official told the Qatari daily Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the organization was not invited.
According to the source, the Palestinian leadership appealed to Egyptian President Sissi, asking that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas be allowed to attend in order to convey the message that the PA is the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians. However, the request was not granted.
The source added that Egypt did not invite the PA because it is not mentioned in the White House’s postwar plan.
The summit will take place after Trump’s visit to Israel and Hamas’s release of the hostages.
The Sinai resort city was the location of the intensive, indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas last week, where mediators were able to secure the first stage of a hostage release deal and ceasefire, marking a key step toward ending a two-year war triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, when some 1,200 people were killed and 251 kidnapped.
With the start of the ceasefire on Friday, the remaining 48 hostages held by terror groups in Gaza, of whom 20 are believed to be alive, were expected to be released within 72 hours — by Monday. Israel is set to release around 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners in exchange, including 250 terror convicts serving life sentences.
Despite the apparent breakthrough, mediators still have the tricky task of securing a longer-term political solution that will see Hamas hand in weapons and step aside from governing Gaza, in accordance with the further phases of the ceasefire deal agreed to in principle last week.
Badran, the Hamas official who spoke with AFP, said the second phase of Trump’s plan, which stipulates for disarmament of the group, the establishment of a multinational force and technocratic government in Gaza and a further Israeli withdrawal, “contains many complexities and difficulties.”
One Hamas official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said disarming the terror group was “out of the question.”
Ahead of the summit in Egypt, Trump will arrive in Israel on Monday morning and address the Knesset before departing for Sharm el-Sheikh four hours later.