US officials walk back elements of Trump’s Gaza ‘takeover’ plan
Al Jazeera
Trump’s top aides say displacement would be temporary after the United Nations warns of ethnic cleansing.
Top US government officials have walked back on some of President Donald Trump’s proposals about taking over Gaza and resettling Palestinians permanently to neighbouring countries, after global condemnation and pushback from Middle East states.
Trump on Tuesday said the US would “take over” and “own” Gaza after resettling Palestinians elsewhere under an extraordinary redevelopment plan that he claimed could turn the enclave into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it,” Trump said at the White House after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, upending decades of US policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday the idea “was not meant as hostile”, describing it as an “offer to rebuild and to be in charge of the rebuilding” and a “generous move”.
At the same time, Rubio walked back Trump’s earlier assertion that Palestinians in Gaza needed to be permanently resettled in neighbouring countries, saying the idea was for them to leave the territory for an “interim” period of reconstruction and debris-clearing.
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