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Mouin Rabbani, a contributing editor to the Middle East Report magazine, dismissed the significance of the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, he said: "What we are seeing now is a sideshow by people who through their own misjudgments, miscalculations, and ill-advised alliances, have sidelined and marginalised themselves, and made themselves irrelevant to the objectives they are seeking to achieve."

Rabbani also said the leaders talked about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as if it had been caused by an earthquake.

"I'm speechless, that you can, in 2009, have a major international gathering to discuss the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and have a whole series of keynote addresses, in which the word occupation isn't mentioned even once."