TURMUS AYYA: The US ambassador to Israel has said there is no plan to force Palestinians out of Gaza, after Israeli ministers laid out ideas on how to expel the war-battered territory’s two million pe ople.
‘I can tell you categorically there is no plan of the Israelis to displace people out of Gaza against their will,’ Ambassador Mike Huckabee told reporters as he visited Palestinian-Americans in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on Saturday.
Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir laid out a plan two days ago that aims to see the departure of 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza in the first year,followed by the rest of the roughly two million residents over the following six years.
His remarks came a day after Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel was ready to remove Palestinians from Gaza by sea and land but was waiting for the United States, which he said was discussing where the population would go.
Katz, without citing his source, said 80pc people in Gaza wanted to leave but Hamas was preventing them.
Huckabee said that President Trump’s administration wanted to give Palestinians the option to leave by choice. ‘There is an open-mindedness if people wish to leave, that they should have the right to leave, Huckabee said, calling it a ‘disgrace’to’incarcerate’Palestinians inside Gaza.
‘Nobody is suggesting there would be forced displacement the Israelis are not, the Americans are not. I know of no one who supports that,’ he said.
Forced displacement of a civilian population from occupied territoryis considered a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.
Virtually the entire population of Gaza has already been displaced internally by Israel’s military offensive following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Since the war, some far-right Israeli politicians have spoken of bringing settlers back to the Gaza Strip, where Israel dismantled settlements in 2005 as part of a unilateral plan to disengage from the densely populated region.
The remarks on displacement come in the run-up to the October 27 elections, in which polls show a tight race for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has brought once shunned far-right figures into his cabinet.
US President Donald Trump stunned the world early in his second term by proposing to displace all Palestinians at least temporarily from Gaza and turn the rubblestrewn Mediterranean territory into a luxury resort, but he backtracked after pushback from countries.Palestinians’safety Also, the US ambassador said Saturday that Israel’s government bore responsibility for West Bank Palestinians’ safety and shouldimpose ‘severe consequences’ over violence, as he visited families following a surge in attacks by settlers.
As Mike Huckabee met families inside a finely manicured oldhouse, a settler from a nearby illegal outpost approached in a quad bike.
‘One of the messages that we have been sending and we will continue to send is that people in these communities have a right to live with a level of security and safety, and that the government has a responsibility to make sure that that happens,’ Huckabee said.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 and violence by Israeli settlers towards Palestinian residents has persisted for years, often with little or no legal consequence, but recent months have seen asurgein attacks.
Huckabee stopped short of criticising Israel by name but called for action against the violence, which he insisted was the ‘work of a small minority of settlers’.
‘Our clear message is that crime is crime, terror is terror. When people do it they should have an expectation that they will have severe consequences,’ Huckabee said.
He said that taking action was in the ‘best interest’ of Israel.-AFP