Donald Trump’s announced plans for the US to take over Gaza and build the war-torn area into a “Middle Eastern Riviera” are facing sharp criticism internationally, several media outlets report.
Turkey condemns the proposal as “unacceptable”.
– It is wrong to even bring it up for discussion, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan tells AFP.
Sanam Vakil, head of the Middle East and North Africa at the think tank Chatham House, interprets Trump’s move as a way to provoke results in later negotiations.
Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy also has little to say about Trump’s plan.
– We have always been clear in our belief that we must have two states, he says during a press conference, according to The Guardian.
Spain’s José Manuel Albares joins the group of critics.
– Let me be very clear: Gaza belongs to the Palestinians of Gaza and they must stay in Gaza, he told reporters on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Saudi Arabia also rejected the idea, stressing in a statement that it “categorically rejected” the idea of a Gaza in the hands of the United States.
Analysis: Trump’s proposal is absurd – could be serious
Donald Trump’s extraterrestrial proposal that the United States should take over Gaza to build a “Middle Eastern Riviera” is absurd for several reasons, writes CNN’s Stephen Collinson in an analysis.
One is that Trump would then repeat crimes committed by tyrants in the past and at the same time give future autocrats an excuse to carry out large-scale ethnic cleansing. He also shows poor understanding of the Gazans’ own ambitions and the attitude of the Arab world.
Collinson wonders if Trump is serious – or if his real estate plans in the Gaza Strip are “another wishful thinking” from a president who often seems detached from reality.
After Trump's unparalleled press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, we probably need to be open to the idea that Trump was serious, writes Bloomberg's Marc Champion in an analysis.
He notes that the president's speech was prepared in a written speech and that his son-in-law Jared Kushner had previously floated the idea of a real estate project with a lake view in Gaza. Trump has also appointed real estate billionaire Steve Witkoff as a special envoy to the region.
It could also be a tactic to get Arab countries involved in the reconstruction of Gaza, writes Champion.
DN's Michael Winiarski calls the proposal an open call for ethnic cleansing. "This neo-colonialist policy of the 19th century will not make Trump more popular in the Arab world, but rather more isolated," he writes.
Donald Trump's statement that the US will "take over Gaza" - and also open to sending American soldiers to the area - came as a surprise even to the most initiated experts.
Anders Persson, a political scientist at Linnaeus University with a focus on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, notes that the statement is unprecedented in how previous American presidents have spoken about Israel-Palestine.
- It is an astonishing and shocking statement, he tells TT and adds that "no one saw this coming".
He believes that most analysts had expected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the White House to result in some kind of American-Israeli plan for what phase two of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas should look like.
– We got very little meat on the bones there about exactly what the US and Israel think that phase should look like.
– By all accounts, we have very difficult negotiations ahead of us regarding the ceasefire.
Argument on the editorial pages about Trump's statement: "Naive analysis"
Editorial writers in the English-speaking world are shocked by yesterday's Trump statement that the Gaza Strip should be transferred to American control, emptied of people, and rebuilt as a "Middle Eastern Riviera".
Bret Stephens writes in the New York Times that the policy is at best incomprehensible. The Washington Post's editorial page believes that it threatens the ceasefire in Gaza - and at the same time strengthens China and Russia.
The Telegraph's Dominic Green, on the other hand, writes that Trump's proposal is only the "first salvo" in an upcoming negotiation and believes that the media and European countries are making a bit of a fool of themselves with their criticism of the statement, while at the same time their concern for the Palestinians is questionable.
“Why is no one asking why the people of Gaza must remain in the quagmire of failure and fanaticism that their leaders have created?”
The Guardian’s editorial page rages against this attitude. The paper writes that many seem to have bought into Trump’s self-image and claim that his shocking statements are just part of an upcoming negotiation.
“It is a naive analysis, although it is consistent with how the president sees himself. He may think he is making ‘deals’, but to everyone else it should be clear that the correct terms are blackmail and coercion.”
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