Wednesday’s White House meeting between US president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu was preceded by weeks of speculation, but no one predicted the president’s call to remove all residents from Gaza and for the United States to “take over” the territory.
Mr Trump’s shock announcement was condemned by the Palestinians and Arab states but enthusiastically welcomed by the far-right in Israel.
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s politburo, described the comments as racist.
“They are a clear attempt to do away with the Palestinian issue and to ignore our firm national rights. Our people in Gaza foiled emigration and exile plans amid attacks over the course of 15 months. The Palestinian people is rooted in its land and will not accept any plan whose goal is to tear it out from its roots,” he said.
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Sami Abu Zuhri, another member of the Hamas politburo, said it was incorrect to say Gaza’s residents have “no alternative” but to leave.
“Trump’s proposals are a recipe for chaos and tension in the region, and the residents of Gaza would not allow plans of this kind to be implemented. What is needed is to end the occupation and the aggression against the Palestinians, and not to expel the Palestinians from their land.”
The Palestinian Authority condemned Mr Trump’s comments as a serious violation of international law.
“The Palestinians express their strong rejection of calls to seize the Gaza Strip and displace Palestinians outside their homeland,” said a statement from president Mahmoud Abbas.
“Legitimate Palestinian rights are not negotiable and Gaza is an integral part of Palestine.”
Despite Mr Trump’s contention that there are countries willing to take in refugees from Gaza, the condemnation of his proposal from across the Arab world was universal.
[ 'We'll own it'. Keith Duggan on Trump's audacious Gaza planOpens in new window ]
Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty said Gaza must be rebuilt without evacuating the residents. He stressed that Cairo supports the rights of the Palestinian people and said the Palestinian Authority must be authorised to rule the Strip and to drive for a diplomatic solution based on the two-state solution.
Saudi Arabia referred to the plan for normalisation of ties with Israel as part of Mr Trump’s grander scheme to reshape the region, stressing that such a move must be conditional on the creation of a Palestinian state. This contradicted Mr Trump’s assertion that Riyadh was not insisting on such a linkage. Riyadh also condemned any attempts to expel Palestinian residents from their land.
However Mr Trump’s plan received widespread support in Israel, particularly from the far-right.
The leader of the far-right Religious Zionist party, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, said the plan is an appropriate answer to the October 7th Hamas attack.
“A person who carried out the horrific massacre on our land will find himself having lost his land – forever. I’m now going to try and bury the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state once and for all.”
Mr Smotrich said the reason he remained in the government, despite his opposition to the Gaza ceasefire, is that he wanted to help implement Mr Trump’s vision, which parallels that of Israel’s right-wing camp.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, whose far-right Otzma Yehudit party quit the government over the Gaza ceasefire, called on Mr Netanyahu to work to implement the plan immediately.
“Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he said. “The only solution to Gaza is encouraging the Gazans to emigrate. When I said time and again in the course of the war that that was the solution, I was mocked. Now it is clear: this is the only solution to the problem of Gaza.
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