GAZA IS A ‘DEMOLITION SITE’
“It’s literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said.
Smotrich, who said only “out-of-the-box thinking” could achieve peace, said Trump’s plan would give Palestinians “the opportunity to build new and better lives elsewhere”.
“With God’s help, I will work with the prime minister and cabinet to develop an operational plan to implement this as soon as possible,” he said.
In a post on X, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said: “Ethnic cleansing is anything but an ‘out-of- the-box’ thinking, no matter how one packages it. It is illegal, immoral and irresponsible.”
Most of Gaza’s million population, which was 2.3 million before the war, have been internally displaced by the war. On Sunday, many of those rejected Trump’s suggestion.
“If he thinks he will forcibly displace the Palestinian people (then) this is impossible, impossible, impossible. The Palestinian people firmly believe that this land is theirs, this soil is their soil,” said Magdy Seidam.
“No matter how much Israel tries to destroy, break, and to show people that it had won, in reality it did not win.”
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel, killing about 1200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed more than 47 000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. The fighting has paused amid a fragile ceasefire.
