The forum will be attended by the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and Turkey, according to the meeting program, which includes a session dedicated to Gaza on Monday with new Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Sigrid Kaag, UN coordinator for aid to Gaza.

French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne is expected to meet with his "European, American and regional counterparts on Gaza and the regional situation, in Riyadh," a diplomatic source told AFP news agency.

The French diplomat's goals are to work for the release of hostages taken during the October Hamas attack and to achieve a lasting ceasefire, the minister's spokesman, Christophe Lemoine, said.

The French minister will then visit Israel and the Palestinian territories and plans to "reiterate to the Israelis the firm opposition to an offensive in Rafah," Lemoine added, referring to the southern Gaza town where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge and which is threatened as Israel seeks to eliminate Hamas's last stronghold.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock is due to arrive in Riyadh on Monday to meet Kaag and her Emirati counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer said.

"The aim of the visit will be to work on the many sensitive issues of the Middle East crisis, on de-escalation and on progress towards a peaceful future," Fischer told reporters earlier today. "As is well known, the Gulf states also have an important role to play in this," he stressed.

Saudi Arabia's neighbour Qatar hosts a Hamas political bureau and has mediated talks that have so far failed to secure a lasting ceasefire and the release of many hostages taken in the October 7th attack.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, has suspended talks with Israel since the war broke out.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has told an Egyptian delegation in Israel that it is ready to make one last attempt to reach a "temporary" truce before launching a ground invasion of the Gaza town of Rafah, home to 1.4 million people, the Israeli daily Walla reported.

"There is a clear time frame for entering Rafah and Israel will not accept another round of futile talks for the sake of deception," a senior Israeli official told Walla's Barak Ravid.

According to the source, Israel is interested in the release of 33 hostages for humanitarian reasons and the ceasefire will depend on the number of Israelis released.

Israel told the Egyptian delegation that preparations for the Rafah operation are serious and that it will not allow the Palestinian Islamists of Hamas to delay it, the source said.

The statements came after an Egyptian delegation visited Israel to try to broker a truce in the Gaza Strip and end the war, as ceasefire negotiations have reached a deadlock.

Hamas has been holding 133 people hostage since the October 7th attack on Israel, some of whom are believed to have died.

The Gaza war has been raging for almost seven months after a raid in southern Israel in which Hamas militants killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostage.

Israeli bombing and a ground offensive in Gaza have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities.

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