Israel said Ireland, Spain and Norway are “legally obligated” to take displaced Gaza residents in the wake of US president Donald Trump’s controversial plan for the enclave.
Israeli defence minister Israel Katz ordered the army on Thursday to prepare a plan to allow the “voluntary departure” of residents from the Gaza Strip, Israeli media reported.
His order to the army followed US president Mr Trump’s shock announcement that the United States plans to take over Gaza, resettle the Palestinians living there and transform the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East”.
“I welcome president Trump’s bold plan, Gaza residents should be allowed the freedom to leave and emigrate, as is the norm around the world,” Israel’s Channel 12 quoted Mr Katz as saying.
When asked who will take in the Palestinians, Mr Katz said it should be countries who have opposed Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
“Countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have levelled accusations and false claims against Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories,” he said.
He added: Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse to do so. There are countries like Canada, which has a structured immigration program, that have previously expressed a willingness to accept Gaza residents.”
However, Spain on Thursday rejected the suggestion by Mr Katz that it should accept displaced Palestinians from Gaza.
“Gazans' land is Gaza and Gaza must be part of the future Palestinian state,” Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, said in an interview with Spanish radio station RNE.
UN secretary general António Guterres has warned against “ethnic cleansing” following US president Donald Trump’s proposal for a US takeover of Gaza.
Mr Guterres planned to tell a UN meeting on Wednesday that “it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing” after the US president said he wanted to “own” Gaza and resettle its Palestinian residents elsewhere.
An unusually broad wave of international outrage and condemnation followed Mr Trump’s announcement after a meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
Germany warned that the plan violated international law and Brazil’s president described it as “incomprehensible”, with China stating it opposed “forced transfer”.
Mr Trump was untouched by hours of global criticism, telling reporters in the Oval Office that “everybody loves [the plan]” at the swearing in of his new attorney general, Pam Bondi.
Addressing Mr Trump’s plan on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it “does not mean boots on the ground in Gaza” following Mr Trump’s saying on Tuesday “if it’s necessary, we’ll do that” when asked if it might involve military force.
“The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza. He has also said that the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza,” said Ms Leavitt while fielding questions on how the plan could work.
She also characterised the US president as being committed to “temporarily relocating” Palestinians from Gaza.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the Trump plan was not meant as a “hostile move”, but rather a generous gesture aimed at rebuilding.
Both regional critics and supporters recognised that Mr Trump’s vision for a “Riviera for the Middle East” was novel only in seeking to insert the US directly into the heart of one of the most volatile, long-running conflicts in the world.
It is premised on emptying Gaza of its residents, effectively a call for ethnic cleansing, and follows decades of debates in the Israeli right over whether Palestinians can be forced from the territory or encouraged to leave with economic incentives.
Mr Trump wants neighbouring countries that are heavily dependent on US aid and military support, including Egypt and Jordan, to offer new homes to large numbers of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents.
Saudi Arabia was among the first countries to reject Mr Trump’s project to reimagine Gaza as a real-estate prospect, and perhaps the most consequential.
Riyadh was quick to announce its “unequivocal rejection” of any attempt to displace Palestinians from their land. The crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has ruled out normalising ties without the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Jordan’s King Abdullah, who faces a difficult face-to-face meeting with Mr Trump in Washington next week, also rejected “any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians”.
It was not the first time he had made Jordan’s position clear. The country already hosts more than 2.7 million Palestinian refugees and accepting people from Gaza under duress would have a destabilising effect.
Egypt’s foreign ministry said reconstruction needed to happen “without Palestinians leaving the territory”. It has previously warned any attempt to transfer people out of Gaza to the Sinai would threaten the peace deal.
Late on Wednesday Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, said any “forced displacement” of Gaza’s population would be “unacceptable”.
“It would be a serious violation of international law, an obstacle to the two-state solution and a major destabilising force for Egypt and Jordan,” the two leaders said, according to a statement from the French presidency.
“The king in Jordan and the general in Egypt will open their hearts and give us the kind of land we need to get this done,” Mr Trump said at the press conference, after laying out plans for the US takeover.
But the political and security implications of taking in large numbers of people from Gaza under duress will be a powerful counterbalance to even the most aggressive threats from the White House.
Mr Trump’s comments came at the start of negotiations for a second stage of the ceasefire deal in Gaza, and sparked fears that they could threaten talks, although the framework deal defers any long-term planning for Gaza’s future to a third stage.
A spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, a host and key mediator in the last round of talks, said they were focusing on extending the current agreement, due to expire at the end of the month.
“I don’t think it’s a time now to start commenting on specific ideas,” spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told Fox News. “It’s too early to talk about this, because we don’t know how this war will end.”
Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, embraced Mr Trump’s comments as vindication of his decision to stay in Mr Netanyahu’s government, despite his fierce opposition to the ceasefire and hostage release deal.
Rival far-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir suggested Mr Trump’s proposal would effectively negate the need for ceasefire talks, which have been overshadowed from the start by lack of any Israeli plans for post-conflict Gaza.
One of Mr Netanyahu’s biggest political rivals, Benny Gantz, also backed Mr Trump’s plans to resettle Palestinians outside Gaza as “admirable”, and said Israel has “nothing to lose from it, only something to gain”.
Only politicians from Israel’s relatively small leftwing parties openly opposed Mr Trump’s proposals, with Gilad Kariv from the Democrats party describing it as “a nightmare for Israel” and Ayman Odeh from the Joint List warning that “a transfer will not happen and will not bring security”. – Guardian
