While the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation summit in Riyadh on Saturday strongly condemned Israel’s brutality against the people of Gaza and called for immediate end to hostilities, new media reports have claimed that Muslim leaders were divided on many strong measures proposed during the meeting.

The summit met over a month after Israel launched air and ground attacks against Gaza, soon after Hamas attacked and killed over 1,000 Israeli people.

At the summit, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman called for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and Turkiye President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called out the west for its double standards over the humanitarian catastrophe.

However, later reports revealed that many ‘strong’ demands were pitched at the meeting but found the Muslim leaders divided.

News reports said that Iran proposed Israel’s army to be declared as ‘terrorists’ at the summit but could not find support from other leaders. The same fate befell a suggestion by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for all Muslim leaders to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel.

Reports also said that Lebanon and Algeria proposed that oil supplies to Israel should be cut off. However, the suggestion was opposed by United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

However, the most comprehensive account of the divisions between Muslim leaders at the summit came from Palestinian analyst Firas Yaghi.

Yaghi said that a set of five demands was put forward by 11 countries at the summit. The demands included:

1. Preventing the use of American and other military bases in Arab countries to supply Israel with weapons and ammunition.
2. Freezing Arab diplomatic, economic, security and military relations with Israel.
3. Threatening to use oil and Arab economic capabilities to pressure to stop the aggression.
4. Preventing Israeli civil aviation from flying in Arab airspace.
5. Forming an Arab Ministerial Committee that will travel immediately to New York, Washington, Brussels, Geneva, London and Paris in order to convey the Arab Summit’s request to stop the Israeli aggression against Gaza.

He added that the the 11 countries that Palestine, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Lebanon, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Libya and Yemen.

However, he said that four countries opposed the five demands outright but did not provide their names. He also did not name the rest of the countries that abstained.

AlJazeer journalist Hashem Ahelbarra also said that the summit’s outcomes are ‘useless’ since no effective consensus has been reached.

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“This summit was just for the sake of a semblance of unity … in the Arab and Muslim world. It’s a watered-down statement. Not all Arab leaders decided to attend this summit because of the huge differences and divisions among the key players of the summit. That’s why they put this vaguely worded statement for public consumption,” Ahelbarra said.

“When you look at the communique you get a sense that the Arab and Muslim leaders do not have a mechanism to push a ceasefire and humanitarian corridor,” he said.