The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced that it will host two Arab and Islamic summits next Saturday and Sunday to discuss developments in the Gaza Strip, and postpone another Arab-African summit that was concerned with economic cooperation.

This announcement came in a statement by the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the summits of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The ministry said that developments in Gaza "necessitated a call for an extraordinary Arab summit and an Islamic summit to discuss the current crisis and the serious humanitarian repercussions it is witnessing," without details.

On Monday, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation announced that “it has been decided to hold an emergency summit next Sunday in Riyadh to discuss the Israeli aggression (against Gaza), based on the invitation of Saudi Arabia, in its capacity as chair of the current summit.”

While the Arab League announced, on October 30, that its General Secretariat had received an official request from Palestine and Saudi Arabia to hold an Arab summit on November 11, to discuss “the continuing Israeli aggression against Gaza.”

While “it was decided to postpone the date of the fifth Arab-African summit (which was scheduled for next Sunday) to a time to be determined later in view of the current developments in Gaza,” according to the Saudi Foreign Ministry.

It added that this step "came after coordination with the secretariat of the League of Arab States and the African Union Commission, and out of concern that the political events in the region would not affect the Arab-African partnership, which is based on the development and economic dimension."