During the meeting, the crown prince stressed the need to discuss ways to stop the military operations that claimed the lives of innocent people.
He affirmed that the Kingdom endeavors to calm tensions, stop the current escalation, respect international humanitarian law, lift the siege on Gaza, and work to create conditions for the return of stability.
The crown prince said that Saudi Arabia is calling for a peaceful resolution to ensure that the Palestinian people obtain their legitimate rights and achieve a just and lasting peace.
The Kingdom condemns attacks that have targeted civilians or disrupted infrastructure and vital interests, he added.
The meeting was attended by Princess Reema bint Bandar bin Sultan, ambassador of Saudi Arabia to the US, and Prince Faisal bin Farhan, minister of foreign affairs.
Also present at the meeting were Michael Ratney, US ambassador to the Kingdom; Dirk Schulet, advisor to the US State Department; Barbara Leaf, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs; and Tom Sullivan, vice president responsible for policy at the State Department.
After seven days of relentless Israeli bombardment, the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is rapidly deteriorating.
Conditions are particularly dire at Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in Gaza City, where Palestinian doctors warn of an impending infectious disease outbreak due to overcrowding.
“There are thousands – if not tens of thousands – of people who have flocked to the hospital,” surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta told Al Jazeera on Saturday.
“They are sleeping on the ground, in the corridors, between patients’ beds. People are absolutely terrified. They think this is the safest place and everything around them confirms that,” he said.
“Unless there is respite there is going to be a public health catastrophe at the hospital.”
As Israeli bombs rain down on Gaza in retaliation to an unprecedented attack by Hamas last week inside Israel, bodies are piling up and people are afraid to bury the dead. The situation is so bad that ice-cream trucks are now being used to store bodies as hospital morgues are full due to the rising death toll – more than 2,200 people as of Saturday, according to health officials.
Abu Sitta said he left Al-Awda Hospital, in the northern Gaza Strip, on Friday after Israeli forces gave the facility two hours to evacuate.
“We made sure the patients were in ambulances and I came back to Al-Shifa Hospital,” he said. “We drove past the Indonesian Hospital and you could see the bodies are piled up outside the morgue. They’ve run out of space. Driving past the destroyed building, the stench was very strong.”
Medics at Shifa were no longer able to operate beyond life-saving surgeries, he said. “The supplies have been exhausted but the staff have also been exhausted. A lot of them have been killed, had family members killed, or are trying to secure their families.”
Abu Sitta said his colleague Medhat Saidam, whom he described as a “lovely man” with whom he had worked since the 2008-2009 war, was killed after escorting his sister to her house. “He decided to stay with them overnight and at 1am he was killed with all of his family,” Abu Sitta said.
According to the surgeon, Israeli forces were “threatening to close” more hospitals, including the Al-Durrah paediatric hospital in eastern Gaza and Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City.
