Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Wednesday, “strongly rejected” President Donald Trump’s proposal to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip.
News Band reported that while hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House, Mr. Trump said that all two million Palestinians from Gaza should be moved to countries like Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by Israel’s campaign against Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism. Sounding like the real estate developer he once was, Mr. Trump vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
The tough-talking American leader did not lay out an option allowing Palestinians who wish to stay to do so.
“I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe the entire Middle East,” Trump said. “And everybody I have spoken to this was not a decision made lightly, everybody I have spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land.”
But in a swift rebuttal, president Mahmoud Abbas in a terse statement rejected the proposal.
“President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership expressed their strong rejection of calls to seize the Gaza Strip and displace Palestinians outside their homeland,” Abbas’s office said in a statement, adding that “legitimate Palestinian rights are not negotiable.”
Reading the statement on Palestinian public television, Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina stressed that the Gaza Strip “is an integral part of the State of Palestine”.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation, an alliance of factions headed by Abbas, also condemned Trump’s proposal to relocate Gazans to Egypt or Jordan.
It rejected “all calls for the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland”, its secretary general, Hussein al-Sheikh, said.
Al-Sheikh reiterated the Palestinian leadership’s firm position that the two-state solution, in accordance with international legitimacy and international law, is the guarantee of security, stability and peace.
“Here we were born, here we lived and here we will remain, and we appreciate the Arab position committed to these constants”, the statement added.
President Abbas also welcomed the sincere position of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that supports and backs the rights of Palestinian people and their just cause.
