Cairo Holds Addis Ababa Responsible for Failure of GERD Talks

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry participated on Sunday in the joint consultative meeting with GCC foreign ministers in Riyadh (Egyptian Foreign Ministry)
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry participated on Sunday in the joint consultative meeting with GCC foreign ministers in Riyadh (Egyptian Foreign Ministry)
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Cairo Holds Addis Ababa Responsible for Failure of GERD Talks

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry participated on Sunday in the joint consultative meeting with GCC foreign ministers in Riyadh (Egyptian Foreign Ministry)
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry participated on Sunday in the joint consultative meeting with GCC foreign ministers in Riyadh (Egyptian Foreign Ministry)

The dispute over Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) returned Sunday to the frontline after Cairo held Addis Ababa responsible for the failure of the latest round of talks to reach an agreement on the operation of the dam.

Cairo’s position was backed by Gulf countries, which refused any action that infringes upon the rights of Egypt and Sudan in the Nile waters.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement said Minister Sameh Shoukry briefed on Sunday his counterparts in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries on developments regarding GERD.

This came during Shoukry’s participation in the joint consultative meeting with GCC foreign ministers in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

Foreign Ministry Official Spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid said Shoukry spoke with GCC countries on Ethiopia’s s uncompromising approach that disregards principles of good neighborliness, leading Egypt to suspend its participation in the negotiations.

Last December, Egypt announced the failure of a round of negotiations on GERD. The talks - held between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia - were previously launched within the framework of the three countries’ agreement to accelerate the completion of the agreement on the rules for filling and operating the dam within four months.

At the time, Egypt’s Ministry of Irrigation said in a statement that the meeting held in Addis Ababa “did not yield any results due to Ethiopia's persistent refusal to accept any of the technical or legal compromise solutions that would safeguard the interests of all three countries.”

GERD has been under construction since 2011 on the Blue Nile, the main tributary of the Nile water.

During Sunday’s meeting in Riyadh, Secretary-General of the GCC Jassim Al-Bedaiwi affirmed that the water security of Egypt and Sudan is an integral part of Arab national security, expressing the Gulf countries' rejection of any action that infringes upon the rights of both countries in the Nile waters.

Dr. Amani El Taweel, director of the African Program at the Center for Al-Ahram Political and Strategic Studies, says the GCC support for Egypt will have a significant impact on the GERD negotiations.

She told Asharq Al-Awsat that the GCC rejection of any action that infringes upon the rights of Egypt in the Nile waters is a political message with implications on the Ethiopian administration.

She noted that Gulf countries have a political influence on Addis Ababa where they have large investments.



Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Amnesty Accuses Israel of 'Live-streamed Genocide' against Gaza Palestinians

TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
TOPSHOT - Palestinians inspect the damage after an Israeli strike on the Yafa school building, a school-turned-shelter, in Gaza City on April 23, 2025. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of committing a "live-streamed genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza by forcibly displacing most of the population and deliberately creating a humanitarian catastrophe.

In its annual report, Amnesty charged that Israel had acted with "specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, thus committing genocide".

Israel has rejected accusations of "genocide" from Amnesty, other rights groups and some states in its war in Gaza.

The conflict erupted after the Palestinian group Hamas's deadly October 7, 2023 attacks inside Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Hamas also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel in response launched a relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip and a ground operation that according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory has left at least 52,243 dead.

"Since 7 October 2023, when Hamas perpetrated horrific crimes against Israeli citizens and others and captured more than 250 hostages, the world has been made audience to a live-streamed genocide," Amnesty's secretary general Agnes Callamard said in the introduction to the report.

"States watched on as if powerless, as Israel killed thousands upon thousands of Palestinians, wiping out entire multigenerational families, destroying homes, livelihoods, hospitals and schools," she added.

'Extreme levels of suffering'

Gaza's civil defense agency said early Tuesday that four people were killed and others injured in an Israeli air strike on displaced persons' tents near the Al-Iqleem area in Southern Gaza.

The agency earlier warned fuel shortages meant it had been forced to suspend eight out of 12 emergency vehicles in Southern Gaza, including ambulances.

The lack of fuel "threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and displaced persons in shelter centers," it said in a statement.

Amnesty's report said the Israeli campaign had left most of the Palestinians of Gaza "displaced, homeless, hungry, at risk of life-threatening diseases and unable to access medical care, power or clean water".

Amnesty said that throughout 2024 it had "documented multiple war crimes by Israel, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects, and indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks".

It said Israel's actions forcibly displaced 1.9 million Palestinians, around 90 percent of Gaza's population, and "deliberately engineered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe".

Even as protesters hit the streets in Western capitals, "the world's governments individually and multilaterally failed repeatedly to take meaningful action to end the atrocities and were slow even in calling for a ceasefire".

Meanwhile, Amnesty also sounded alarm over Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank, and repeated an accusation that Israel was employing a system of "apartheid".

"Israel's system of apartheid became increasingly violent in the occupied West Bank, marked by a sharp increase in unlawful killings and state-backed attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians," it said.

Heba Morayef, Amnesty director for the Middle East and North Africa region, denounced "the extreme levels of suffering that Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to endure on a daily basis over the past year" as well as "the world's complete inability or lack of political will to put a stop to it".