President Trump, while hosting Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin at a press conference at the White House on Wednesday, appeared to back down on his plan to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” by expelling all Palestinian residents.
Trump told reporters that “Nobody is driving the Palestinians out,” when asked if he would still stand by his highly provocative remarks, which amounted to a call for ethnic cleansing of the enclave.
“We are working very hard with Israel to see [how] we can solve the problem,” Trump explained.
The recent remarks stand in stark contrast to his earlier remarks in February, made alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he said: “The US is taking over the Gaza Strip … I see this as a long-term ownership position.” He had made it clear that Palestinians in Gaza must leave and settle elsewhere.
In a back-and-forth with reporters on Wednesday, he actually called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a “Palestinian” again, then quipped: “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.”
The White House’s position on deporting Gazans to other countries is based on a previous explanation that “Gaza is currently uninhabitable and residents cannot humanely live in a territory covered in rubble and unexploded ordnance,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the US National Security Council.
But even many Republicans consider this plan completely unrealistic and absurd, given that it would, to begin with, guarantee years of brutal war and the likelihood that the conflict will spread to other Arab countries.
Removing the debris that has accumulated on the demolished Strip could take years or even decades …
Jordan and Egypt were among the first to vehemently reject Trump’s plan to rebuild Gaza, and the Jordanian leadership even threatened that its military would try to prevent it.
