Outraged Palestinians condemned President Donald Trump's claim the United States would seek ownership of the Gaza Strip and they would have no choice but to leave their homes in the war-torn enclave.
In Gaza's southern city of Khan Younis, Narmin Nour El Din, 29, told an NBC News crew that all Palestinians would reject Trump's suggestions.
“All the Palestinians refuse the idea and we will be insistent on our land,” she said, standing outside a tent encampment.
“We ask Trump to leave the people to live in their land and to make the land more beautiful. To help the people here,” she said. “Not to take Gaza from them.”
Others like Hussein Abdel Jawad, 25, said they feared Trump’s plan would succeed and he felt clear that Trump had “business” ambitions for the enclave.
At a news conference Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said the United States would take a “long-term ownership position” and would bring “great stability to the Middle East.”
“We’ll own it,” he said. Asked who would live in the territory he envisioned as the “riviera of the Middle East” Trump, a longtime real estate developer, answered: “The world’s people.”
Palestinians would also live there among “many” others, he said in comments that stood in stark contrast to those he made earlier in the day when he repeatedly called Gaza a “demolition site” from which Palestinians should be relocated.
The plan has been criticized for ignoring the Palestinian cause at its most basic — the creation of an internationally recognized state. The United States, the Palestinians and the international community have long considered the Gaza Strip to be an integral part of this future state, although negotiations have languished for decades.
For some, Trump’s proposal will also be a reminder of the “Nakba” — the Arabic word for “catastrophe” used to describe the 1948 displacement of some 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes during the founding of Israel.
And Palestinian politicians of all persuasions were united in their condemnation of the comments.
Izzat Al-Rishq, a senior member of Hamas, which ruled Gaza after 2007 and has survived 15 months of war with Israel, said that the proposal reflected Trump’s “confusion and deep ignorance.”
