Five major Arab countries have opposed the issue of removing Palestinians from Gaza and taking them to another place.
Foreign ministers of Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League have met in Egypt’s capital Cairo on this issue.
In the meeting, foreign ministers of all these countries said that they are against forcibly removing Palestinians from Gaza and settling them somewhere else.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump had said that Palestinians should be removed from Gaza and settled in Egypt and Jordan.
Now the leaders of these countries say that what Egypt and Jordan have said about keeping the people of Gaza in their country is not correct and this can pose a threat to the stability of the area.
According to news agency AFP, in a joint statement, these leaders said that “promoting the removal of Palestinians from one place through displacement or their removal from their land” would be a “violation of the rights” of Palestinian citizens.
Egypt’s President Abdul Fatah al-Sisi said that “the removal of Palestinian people from their land is injustice and we cannot participate in it.”
These leaders said that they are ready to work with the Trump administration so that peace can be established in the Middle East and this problem can be resolved based on the two-nation theory.
What is Trump’s proposal?
US President Donald Trump wants neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan to keep the Palestinian people in their country to ‘clean out Gaza’.
Trump said that he has made this request to Jordan’s King Abdullah and he plans to request the Egyptian President in this regard on Sunday.
Describing Gaza as a “place of destruction”, Trump said, “You’re talking about maybe 150,000 people, and we’re just going to clear that whole place.” He said the move could be “temporary” or “long-term”.
Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have condemned Trump’s proposal. Jordan and Egypt have also rejected Trump’s idea.
Trump made this comment while talking to reporters on Air Force One.
He said, “Almost everything there (in Gaza) has been destroyed and people are dying. So I would like to work with some Arab countries to build them a home in another place where they can live in peace.”
It is unclear whether the US president has made a formal request to Egypt, but Egypt’s foreign ministry has rejected any such effort.
Donald Trump has a long history of putting forward ideas that can never be realized.
The Conversation has also spoken to some experts on the issue. As Karin Augustem of Lund University explained, “Trump’s proposal has been viewed with disbelief across the Middle East. It has been widely criticized across the region as a potential ‘second Nakba’.” The displacement of Palestinians after the unilateral declaration of Israel as a state in 1948 is known as al-Nakba.
Some analysts believe Trump’s proposal would amount to ‘ethnic cleansing.’
Youssef Munair, head of the Palestine-Israel program at the Arab Center in Washington DC, told Al Jazeera earlier this week that Trump’s “outrageous” statement should be condemned because it violates all norms and basic rights.
“Trump says all kinds of things,” Munair said. He made it clear that the US president’s statement should be viewed with skepticism.
In separate remarks on Air Force One, Trump said he had lifted a ban imposed by former President Joe Biden on the supply of two thousand pound bombs to Israel.
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“Israel has paid for it and they have been waiting for it for a long time,” he told reporters.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel, helping it build one of the world’s most technologically advanced armies.
But the war in Gaza has revived calls for the US to reduce or stop arms supplies to Israel, as American weapons have caused much destruction in the region. is.
Opposition from Arab countries
Egypt’s foreign ministry has opposed the plan, “whether it is used as a temporary or long-term means of settling people, occupying land or displacing Palestinians and forcing them off their land.”
Jordan’s foreign minister said his regime was “firm and unwavering” in its rejection of the issue of displacing Palestinians.
In a joint statement issued after a meeting in Cairo, foreign ministers and officials from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League said such a move would threaten stability in the region, escalating conflict and undermine prospects for peace, Arab News reported.
The Arab ministers also welcomed Egypt’s plan to hold an international meeting with the United Nations that will focus on the reconstruction of Gaza, which has been badly devastated during the 15-month war between Israel and Hamas. However, no date has yet been set for the meeting.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 people captive. A ceasefire has been in place in Gaza since then following an agreement between Israel and Hamas to stop the war that began.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says more than 47,200 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks, most of them civilians.
Most of Gaza’s 2 million people have been displaced in the past 15 months of war, and much of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
The United Nations previously estimated that 60% of structures in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed and it could take decades to rebuild them.
What Hamas said
Basem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau in Gaza, told the BBC: “Our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have endured 15 months of death and destruction without leaving their land. So they will not accept any proposal or solution, even if it is done with good intentions in the name of reconstruction, as declared in US President Trump’s proposals.”
“Just as our people have thwarted all plans for displacement and alternative homelands for decades, they will thwart such a plan too,” he said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has strongly condemned and disagreed with any plan aimed at displacing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
When asked about Trump’s comments, displaced Abu Yahya Rashid in the southern city of Khan Younis said: “We decide our fate and our wishes. This land is ours and the historical property of our ancestors. We will leave it only after we die.”
Decades of US foreign policy have called for the creation of a Palestinian state with Gaza as its main focus, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected this.
The idea of sending Gazans to neighboring countries has long been pushed by hard-line right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the Jewish Power party and former national security minister, said he applauded Trump for “taking the initiative to move people from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt.”
Ben-Gvir recently resigned from his ministerial post in protest of the Gaza ceasefire.
“One of our demands from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to promote voluntary immigration,” he wrote on X.
The current Israeli finance minister, the far-right Bezalel Smotrich, has also said that Palestinians should migrate to neighboring countries so that Jewish settlements can be re-established in Gaza.
According to Leonie Fleischman of City, University of London, the pair share an anti-Arab ideology and a messianic belief in the Jewish people’s right to what they call “Greater Israel”, according to The Conversation.
This refers to a Jewish state that would include the West Bank, which they call “Judea and Samaria”, as well as Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and parts of Saudi Arabia.
“The West Bank and Gaza Strip were the sites of many important events in biblical times and were home to several Israelite dynasties. In the Bible, God also promises the land to the descendants of Abraham,” explains Fleischman.
Fleischman writes that this is why Smotrich and Ben Gvir believe that the Jewish people have a God-given right to inhabit all of Greater Israel.
Such comments have angered Palestinians and disappointed supporters of a “two-state solution” such as the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Palestinians fear that those around President Trump are pushing them in a more hardline direction in terms of Middle East policy.
Trump, who this month nominated Christian devout Mike Huckabee to be the next US ambassador to Israel, has completely rejected the idea of a Palestinian state.
“The Palestinians have had a chance in Gaza and look what happened there,” he said in a US television interview.
History of the conflict in Gaza
Gaza was occupied by Israel in 1967. In 2005, Israel withdrew its troops and residents from the strip, but it remains in control of Gaza’s airspace, coastline, and roads.
Huckabee’s comments contradict six decades of US policy in the Middle East, in which the US has long pushed the concept of a “two-nation solution”.
The US has previously said it opposes any forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
According to the United Nations, more than two million Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, most of whom have been granted citizenship there.
These people are descendants of some of the nearly 750,000 Palestinians who fled their homes or were forced to leave their homes due to conflicts at the time of Israel’s formation in 1948.
Thousands of Palestinians have fled to Egypt since the war with Israel began but are not recognized as refugees there.
Some Israeli right-wingers want to establish their settlements in Gaza. Israel ordered their unilateral withdrawal in 2005, destroying 21 settlements and driving out about 9,000 people by the army.
Trump’s comments come as Israel and Hamas agree on a ceasefire deal and displaced people are returning to their homes in northern Gaza.
One Palestinian anxiously waiting to return home told the BBC: “There is nothing there. There is no life, everything has been destroyed. But it is still a great joy to return to your land, to your home.”
