Trump’s declaration US will ‘take over’ Gaza Strip sparks global condemnation

Guardian:

Trump’s declaration US will ‘take over’ Gaza Strip sparks global condemnation

Germany, China, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia speak against announcement by US president as human rights groups say plan is ethnic cleansing

Trump’s Gaza plan 'unacceptable', says Turkish foreign minister

Turkey’s top diplomat on Wednesday criticised Donald Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and resettle Palestinians in other countries.

“This is an unacceptable issue,” Turkish foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, told the official news agency Anadolu in broadcast comments. He said relocating Palestinians from Gaza was something “neither we nor the region can accept”.

“It is wrong to even bring it up for discussion,” he added, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).


The UN’s high commissioner for refugees, Filippo Grandi, has told AFP that Donald Trump’s comments proposing the US “take over” Gaza were “surprising”.

“It’s something very surprising, but we have to see what it means in concrete terms,” Grandi said in Brussels, adding that it was difficult to comment on such a “sensitive issue”.

Trump said the US would “take over” Gaza and “own it”, effectively publicly endorsing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians after Israel has spent months bombing the densely populated territory in a military campaign which has killed tens of thousands, and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.

General view of the rubble of houses and buildings destroyed during the Israeli offensive in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. Photograph: Mahmoud Issa/ReutersShare


John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has condemned President Trump’s plans for Gaza as “unacceptable and dangerous”, saying there “must be no ethnic cleansing”.

In a post on Bluesky he said:

After months of collective punishment and the death of over 40,000 in Gaza, any suggestion Palestinians should be removed from their home is unacceptable and dangerous.

There must be no ethnic cleansing.

Only a proper two state solution will bring lasting peace.”

And Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s former first minister, whose parents-in-law were trapped in Gaza for a number of weeks in 2023 after the 7 October Hamas massacre tiggered war, has also described President Trump’s plan as “ethnic cleansing”.

In a post on social media commenting on what Trump said during his White House press conference, Yousaf said:

Why is it a living hell? Who bombed it, killing tens of thousands of people, including children, and reduced Gaza to rubble?

Also, what Trump calls “permanent resettlement” is what the rest of the world should call ethnic cleansing.

Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza. Period.”