GAZA – The Palestinian group Hamas reiterated its opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments about buying and owning Gaza, describing them as “absurd.”
Trump said on Sunday he is committed to buying and owning Gaza, but could allow sections of the war-ravaged land to be rebuilt by other states in the Middle East.
“I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it, other people may do it, through our auspices. But we’re committed to owning it,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to New Orleans to attend the National Football League Super Bowl championship.
Ezzat El Rashq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, condemned Trump’s statements, saying, “Gaza is not a property to be sold and bought. It is an integral part of our occupied Palestinian land.”
“Dealing with the Palestinian issue with the mentality of a real estate dealer is a recipe for failure,” al-Risheq added.
“Our Palestinian people will thwart all displacement and deportation plans. Gaza belongs to its people.”
Trump’s plan to displace Palestinians and turn the enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East” drew widespread international condemnation from leaders and officials worldwide.
Countries including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, France, Spain, Ireland, Germany, Türkiye, Iran, and Brazil voiced their opposition to any forced displacement. Australia, Russia, and China said a two-state solution is the only way forward. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said, “It is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing.”
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday no one had the power to remove Gazans from their war-devastated homeland, dismissing Donald Trump’s expulsion plan.
“No one has the power to remove the people of Gaza from their eternal homeland that has been around for thousands of years,” he told a late-night news conference at Istanbul airport before flying to Malaysia.
Trump, a real estate developer before entering politics, “is woefully ignorant of international law and the law of occupation. Forcible displacement of an occupied group is an international crime, and amounts to ethnic cleansing,” Navi Pillay, chair of the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, told POLITICO in an interview.
“There is no way under the law that Trump could carry out the threat to dislocate Palestinians from their land,” Pillay said.
Pillay, a former judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC), also condemned Trump’s sanctions on the ICC, which has issued an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for war crimes.
“International law applies equally, without double standards for a state’s friends,” Pillay said.
A group of almost 80 countries issued a joint statement in defence of the ICC, warning sanctions could force the closure of the court’s field offices and undermine its investigation.
The Zionist occupation’s genocidal war on Gaza has resulted in the martyrdom of 48,189 people and 111,640 injured, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Gaza’s Government Media Office has updated the toll to at least 61,709 martyrs, saying thousands who were missing under the rubble are now presumed dead.
