DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — President Donald Trump’s proposal that the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and completely resettle its Palestinian residents was swiftly rejected and denounced on Wednesday by American allies and adversaries alike.
Trump’s suggestion got here at a White Home information convention with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who smiled a number of occasions because the president detailed a plan to construct new settlements for Palestinians outdoors the Gaza Strip, and for the U.S. to take “possession” in redeveloping the war-torn territory into “the Riviera of the Center East.”
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we’ll do a job with it too,” Trump mentioned. “We’ll personal it and be chargeable for dismantling the entire harmful unexploded bombs and different weapons on the location, stage the location, and do away with the destroyed buildings, stage it out, create an financial growth that can provide limitless numbers of jobs.”
The feedback got here amid a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, throughout which the militant group has been turning over hostages in change for the discharge of prisoners held by Israel.
Egypt, Jordan and different American allies within the Center East have already rejected the thought of relocating greater than 2 million Palestinians from Gaza elsewhere within the area. Following Trump’s remarks, Egypt’s Overseas Ministry issued a press release stressing the necessity for rebuilding “with out shifting the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.”
Saudi Arabia, an essential American ally, weighed in shortly on Trump’s expanded concept to take over the Gaza Strip in a sharply worded assertion, noting that its lengthy name for an unbiased Palestinian state was a “agency, steadfast and unwavering place.”
“The dominion of Saudi Arabia additionally stresses what it had beforehand introduced concerning its absolute rejection of infringement on the respectable rights of the Palestinian individuals, whether or not via Israeli settlement insurance policies, annexation of Palestinian lands or efforts to displace the Palestinian individuals from their land,” the assertion mentioned.
The prime ministers of Australia and Eire, international ministries from China, New Zealand and Germany, and a Kremlin spokesman all reiterated help for a two-state answer.
“Australia’s place is identical because it was this morning, because it was final 12 months, because it was 10 years in the past,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mentioned.
Trump has already made waves — and upset longtime allies — suggesting the buy of Greenland, the annexation of Canada and the doable takeover of the Panama Canal. It was not instantly clear whether or not the thought of taking on the Gaza Strip was a effectively thought out plan, or a gap gambit in negotiations.
“The feedback final evening had been, in fact, very regarding,” mentioned Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. “I at all times undertake the method in relation to the U.S. administration of: decide them primarily based on what they do and never what they are saying.”
Turkish Overseas Minister Hakan Fidan advised state-run Anadolu Company that Trump’s proposal on “deportations from Gaza shouldn’t be one thing that both the area or we’d settle for.”
“Even interested by it, in my view, is unsuitable and absurd,” Fidan mentioned.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas referred to as for the United Nations to “defend the Palestinian individuals and their inalienable rights,” saying that what Trump wished to do could be “a critical violation of worldwide regulation.”
Representatives of Palestinian refugee teams in Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut rejected the proposal and mentioned it was doomed to fail. Lebanon hosts about 200,000 refugees, a lot of whom reside in camps arrange after 1948, when their dad and mom or grandparents fled their properties in land that turned Israel.
Fathi Kallab, a member of the leftist political faction Democratic Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine, mentioned the plan would violate worldwide regulation.
“Displacement of residents below humanitarian pretexts is taken into account a struggle crime punishable by regulation, as acknowledged by a number of worldwide organizations,” he mentioned. “It exploits the humanitarian situations that the individuals of Gaza are affected by most often.”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer referred to pictures of “hundreds of Palestinians strolling via the rubble” to get again to what stays of their properties.
“They have to be allowed house,” Starmer mentioned. ”They have to be allowed to rebuild, and we needs to be with them in that rebuild, on the best way to a two-state answer.”
Hamas, which sparked the struggle with its Oct. 7, 2023, assault on Israel, mentioned Trump’s proposal was a “recipe for creating chaos and rigidity within the area.”
“As an alternative of holding the Zionist occupation accountable for the crime of genocide and displacement, it’s being rewarded, not punished,” the militant group mentioned in a press release.
In its assault on Israel, Hamas killed some 1,200 individuals, primarily civilians, and took about 250 hostages.
Israel’s ensuing air and floor struggle has has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, greater than half of them ladies and kids, in accordance with native well being authorities who don’t say how lots of the useless had been fighters. The struggle has left massive elements of a number of cities in ruins and displaced round 90% of Gaza’s inhabitants of two.3 million individuals.
Within the U.S., opposition politicians shortly rejected Trump’s concept, with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons calling his feedback “offensive and insane and harmful and silly.”
The thought “dangers the remainder of the world pondering that we’re an unbalanced and unreliable companion as a result of our president makes insane proposals,” Coons mentioned, noting the irony of the proposal coming shortly after Trump had moved to dismantle the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement.
“Why on earth would we abandon a long time of well-established humanitarian applications around the globe, and now launch into one of many world’s best humanitarian challenges?” Coons mentioned.
Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American member of Congress from Michigan, accused Trump in a social media submit of “overtly calling for ethnic cleaning” with the thought of resettling Gaza’s total inhabitants.
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Rising reported from Bangkok. Related Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Simina Mistreanu in Taipei, Taiwan; Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Samy Magdy in Cairo and Charlotte McLay in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.
