Mideast nations confront chaos in their region, which Egypt warns ‘is at a point of implosion’

UNITED NATIONS — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Oman — all nations in the thick of the unrest that has pervaded the Middle East — confronted the crisis in the region at the annual U.N. gathering of world leaders, with Egypt’s top diplomat warning that the Mideast “is at a point of implosion.”

All four countries on Saturday decried Israel’s ongoing pursuit of war in Gaza and the horrific impact on Palestinian civilians – and they bemoaned the failure of the United Nations and the broader international community to achieve a ceasefire and end the bloodshed.

The four ministers spoke a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — facing protesters, critics and growing global isolation over his Gaza policies — told the General Assembly his country “must finish the job” against Hamas for its Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. Hamas also took 250 hostages. Israeli forces recently launched an offensive to take control of Gaza City.

Here’s a country-by-country look at those four leaders’ takes from the U.N. podium on the overall Mideast situation and Gaza in particular.

Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, whose country has been a key mediator in Gaza along with the United States and Qatar, sharply criticized the international community “standing idly by as a spectator” while international law is systematically violated in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Israel’s “wanton, unjust war waged against defenseless civilians for a sin they did not commit” is “transpiring without accountability, and it has affected one country after another,” he said.

Abdelatty recalled former president Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Israel in 1977, and Egypt becoming “one of the first to anchor the pillar of peace in the region.” But surveying the turmoiul in the Mideast today, he accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza – which it vehemently denies – and blocking the Palestinians’ fron establishing an independent state.

Abdelatty said Israel can’t be secure unless other countries in the region are secure, and “the region cannot see stability without an independent state of Palestine.”

In the region, he pointed to civil war in Sudan, the need for elections in divided Libya, resolving Yemen’s crisis between the internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels who control the capital and most of the north, and ending repeated Israeli violations of…