When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visited the White House Prime Minister Benjamin, the White House, the president Trump sold him a brazen dream: the United States would have taken control of the Gaza Strip, transfer about two million Palestinians and transform the devastated sea enclave into a sparkling “riviera”.
This week, while the two leaders faced journalists again after meeting the Oval Office, Trump seemed to have gone on, instead resisting the US border policy, his new rates, the difficult situation of the hostages held in Gaza and the last showstopper for the Middle East policy – the opening of the talks with Iran to curb the program of nuclear weapons.
But Mr. Netanyahu did not let Gaza’s idea – however impossible or potentially illegal to vanish – like a mirage. He raised him alone, saying that he and Mr. Trump had discussed the vision, including which countries they could agree to accept Gazas.
Netanyahu and his government claim to be seriously on the idea, but they emphasize that they are talking about facilitating the “voluntary” migration of the Palestinians, in an apparent attempt to avoid any suggestion of ethnic cleaning. Critics say that it would not be voluntary if Gazas left, regardless, since so many of their homes have been destroyed to the rubble.
Days after the original announcement of Mr. Trump, the Israeli Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, said he was establishing a special administration within the Ministry focused on voluntary migration from Gaza. At the end of March, he appointed a high official of the ministry, Yaakov Blitshtein, to direct him.
Mr. Netanyahu told journalists on Monday at the oval office that Gaza was the only war area in which civilians were “blocked”, unable to leave.
“We have not blocked them,” he said, without recognizing years of serious Israeli restrictions on the movements inside and outside the enclave for what the country says are security reasons, an Israeli naval block of the territory and the refusal of Israel to allow Gazan to live within its borders. Egypt also strictly controls its edge with the enclave.
“It will take years to reconstruct Gaza,” said Netanyahu, referring to the vast destruction caused by the 18 -month campaign of Israel, which was lit by the attack led by Hamas to Israel. “In the meantime, people can have an option. The president has a vision. Countries are responding to that vision,” he added.
Israeli officials would not say with which third countries they were talking about taking the Palestinians. Trump had suggested regional neighbors such as Jordan and Egypt. But he seemed to withdraw from his idea of barely transferred two weeks after proposing it, after those two countries categorically rejected the idea and said that peace could only be reached by giving the state of the Palestinians.
Egypt refused to take on a large number of Palestinians during the war, fearing that their arrival would have a destabilizing effect and that in the end they would not have been authorized to return to Gaza.
The movement of mass has connotations framed in the region. About two thirds of the population of Gaza are made up of Palestinian refugees who have lost their homes during the hostilities that surround the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and their descendants. At that time, about 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from what Israel is now in what is known by the Palestinians as Nakba, or “catastrophe”.
Some alternative names of potential guests have been floated by Israelians, such as Somaliland, a republic of self-seated escape in the north-western Somalia in the Horn of Africa, but may appear less attractive than staying in Gaza.
However, several countries have agreed to take on a limited number of Gazani for humanitarian reasons, including Romania and Italy, who oversaw children with medical conditions. And on Wednesday, President Prabowo Substructure of Indonesia said that his country was ready to offer temporary shelter to a first wave of about 1,000 evacuated doctors by Gaza and orphaned children from the war there.
“We are ready to evacuate those who are injured or traumatized and orphans,” he said while he was about to leave for a trip to the Middle East and Türkiye. “We are ready to send planes to transport them,” he said, adding that the move was not designed for permanent resetting.
When a journalist asked Mr. Trump on Monday if his proposal for Gaza’s emigration was still on the table, he vaguely replied that it was “a concept that I had” and that people seemed to appreciate the question to Mr. Netanyahu.
Katz, the Israeli defense minister, declared in a last month declaration that Israel was “determined to create the vision of the President of the United States Donald Trump”. He said that the controls of his ministry suggested that “at least 40 percent of the residents of Gaza is interested in migrating to other places”.
According to the declaration, the administration should alleviate the exit routes on the ground, air and sea. But the details remain poor. The Ministry of Defense has refused requests for comments or information, as well as the military department responsible for Palestinian civil affairs and the Israeli population and the borders authority.