Turkey’s foreign minister Hakan Fidan strongly rejected Trump‘s proposed plan for the US to take control and ownership of the Gaza Strip in addition to sending its population of 2 million Palestinians to other countries, something the Turkish foreign minister called ‘unacceptable’.
‘This is an unacceptable issue, even raising it for discussion is wrong,’ Fidan said in a wide-ranging interview with the semi-official Anatolia news agency aired by state broadcaster TRT. ‘Talking about deportation in Gaza is not something we or the countries in the region will accept. Even thinking about it is a waste of time. We are against any initiative that seeks to exclude the people of Gaza from the equation,’ he stressed.
‘The international community, especially the Islamic world, has shown consensus on the two-state solution based on the 1967 borders. There is a tendency in a few countries not to fully recognise Israel, but the general trend is that the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the creation of a state with full sovereignty, will largely solve this problem,’ Fidan explained when asked about the US president’s remarks.
Trump, who did not rule out sending troops to Gaza, launched his proposal during a joint press appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is visiting Washington: ‘The United States will take control of the Gaza Strip, and we will work in it. We will own it and we will be responsible for dismantling all the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons, we will level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings… We will create economic development that will supply an unlimited number of jobs,’ the US politician said, without elaborating on how he would take control of the region and send the Palestinian population elsewhere.
Arab countries and Hamas strongly reject Trump’s plan
Trump added that his plan would lead to the US assuming ‘long-term ownership’ of the territory and would serve to turn Gaza into ‘the Riviera of the Middle East’, which he said would be ‘so magnificent’. The US president also claimed to have the support of ‘the highest leadership’ in the Middle East for this idea and again said that Egypt and Jordan should take in Gaza’s population, even though both nations and other US allies in the region have already strongly rejected the mass deportation of Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia, another important US ally in the Middle East, also reacted immediately to Trump’s proposal in a strongly worded statement, making clear that its support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state is ‘a firm, unalterable and unwavering position’. By contrast, Netanyahu was immediately enthusiastic about a plan that he said could ‘change history’ and which the Israeli politician said ‘worths attention’.
Also completely rejecting Trump’s plan for long-term US control of Gaza was Hamas, which has controlled the territory since 2007, calling the proposal ‘racist’ and seeking to ‘eliminate’ the Palestinian people from the region. ‘This racist US idea aligns with Israeli far-right positions to displace our people and eliminate our cause,’ a spokesman for the organisation said.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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