Arab League summit in Delhi focuses on Gaza aid as regional conflicts simmer

New Delhi is hosting a gathering of the Arab world this week, and the stakes are as much about money and maritime routes as they are about the fractured politics of the Middle East. All 22 member states of the Arab League are sending delegations—seven or eight foreign ministers in person, the rest represented by deputies and senior officials. The United Arab Emirates will co-chair. It is the kind of summit that happens when a major power wants to deepen ties with a region that matters to its survival.

For India, the math is straightforward. Trade with the Arab League totaled $240 billion last year, more than half of it in oil and gas. Nearly all of that commerce moves through waterways that ring the Arab world: the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden. Control those straits, and you control India's energy supply. This is why the India-Arab Foreign Ministers' Meeting, formalized in 2002, has become what New Delhi calls its highest institutional mechanism for partnership with the region. On Friday, senior officials will meet. Later that day, delegations will call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But the summit is not merely transactional. Palestine's Foreign Minister, Varsen Aghabekian Shahin, has come to Delhi with a specific request: India's help in rebuilding Gaza. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is holding, fragile as it is. The reconstruction will take years. Shahin told reporters that Palestine needs India to do more than vote the right way at the United Nations—though India's long record of supporting Palestinian statehood matters. He asked for humanitarian aid, development assistance, reconstruction assistance. He framed it as a test of India's commitment to international law and the two-state solution, principles New Delhi has championed since recognizing Palestine in the late 1980s. The United Nations Security Council has mandated a Board of Peace to oversee Gaza's reconstruction through 2027. The work is immense.

The summit's agenda reflects a region in upheaval. Syria is sending a representative for the first time since the fall of Bashar al-Assad just over a year ago—a diplomatic opening between New Delhi and Damascus that signals Syria's slow return to the Arab fold. Libya's Foreign Minister, Eltaher S.M. Elbaour, is visiting India for the first time since Muammar Gaddafi's fall in 2011. His presence carries weight: Pakistan has been reported to be offering JF-17 fighter jets to Khalifa Haftar, the warlord who controls eastern Libya. A Libyan minister in New Delhi, meeting with India and the broader Arab League, is a counterweight to that alignment.

Yet the deeper crisis is in Yemen and Sudan, where civil wars continue to grind on with no resolution in sight. Sudan's conflict began roughly three years ago when the Rapid Support Forces militia seized Khartoum and swept across the western regions. The UAE backs the RSF; Saudi Arabia backs the internationally recognized government. Yemen's war started in 2015 when Iranian-backed Houthis took the north, including the capital Sana'a. Last month, the UAE withdrew from the Saudi-led coalition after Riyadh accused Abu Dhabi of supporting South Yemeni separatists. Both countries are sending representatives to Delhi—Sudan its Foreign Minister, Yemen its Vice Minister. Both are sending them to a table where the Arab world gathers with India to discuss how to move forward.

What emerges from this summit will matter less than what it signals: that India sees itself as a stakeholder in Arab stability, that the Arab League sees India as a partner worth consulting, and that the region's conflicts—Gaza's reconstruction, Syria's reintegration, Libya's fragility, Yemen and Sudan's endless wars—are no longer problems the Arab world can solve alone. India's role is still being written.