Gideon Sa’ar called the enclave a “failed experiment” requiring outside-the-box” ideas.
By JNS
The Gaza Strip is a “failed experiment” whose problems require an original approach, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Wednesday.
Sa’ar, during a speech addressing the Knesset plenum in Jerusalem, defended U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Gazans.
“Unfortunately, I am already hearing criticism in diplomatic discourse, for example, from Europe, as well in the conversations I hold” about Trump’s proposals, Sa’ar said.
“I believe it is crucial today to consider and examine ideas that are out of the box,” he added, calling Gaza “a failed experiment” that “failed under Egyptian sovereignty, it failed when it was handed over to the Palestinian Authority under the Oslo Accords, and it has certainly failed under Hamas rule.”
Soon after taking office last month, Trump began discussing a mass relocation of Gaza’s population, which he said was necessary for humanitarian reasons. On Tuesday, he said he envisioned the U.S. “taking over” the Strip to rebuild it.
The U.S. president said he had discussed the issue of relocation with Jordan and Egypt, both of which, along with other Arab countries have publicly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, he has dismissed their opposition, insisting at a Q&A session with journalists at the White House on Tuesday that the proposal will be implemented.
Sa’ar commended Trump’s approach. “We must try to find a different solution, a new approach. This is what the U.S. president is trying to do, and we can only welcome it,” he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called Trump’s “unacceptable” on Jan. 28, adding, “Any resettlement plans, the idea that the citizens of Gaza will be expelled from there to Egypt or Jordan, is unacceptable.”
On Wednesday, the French Foreign Ministry said that Paris “reiterates its opposition to any forced displacement of the Palestinian population of Gaza,” but the statement stopped short of addressing voluntary relocation.
Sa’ar in his speech envisioned voluntary relocation. “As long as migration happens by an individual’s free will, regardless of the location in the world, and as long as there is a country willing to accept that person, can anyone claim it is immoral?” he asked. “This is what happens elsewhere, we see it in conflicts worldwide.”
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Tuesday said, “We must see two states and we must see Palestinians able to live and prosper in their homelands in Gaza, in the West Bank. That is what we want to get to,” he said.