On Feb. 4, US President Trump held a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu right after the summit at the White House.
During the press conference, he announced that the US would take control of Gaza and turn Gaza into a “Riviera” (a famous vacation spot in the Mediterranean Sea) in West Asia (Middle East).
“The Gaza Plan” is to forcibly relocate the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza to neighboring Egypt and Jordan and develop it into an international resort area under US ownership.
On the 9th, he called Gaza a “Big Real Estate Site” and said that West Asian countries could be invited to participate in the development.
In response, Izzat al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, criticized Trump’s comments as “the mentality of a real estate dealer,” saying that “Gaza is not a property that can be bought and sold, but an integral part of our occupied Palestinian land.”
Netanyahu has hailed Trump’s plan (forced relocation, ownership and development initiative) as “revolutionary and creative,” but Hamas and the Arab states oppose it.
The Arab League (AL), a group of 22 Arab states, immediately issued a statement calling the move “shocking” and saying it would “violate international law and cause further instability.”
Saudi Arabia said in a statement on the 5th that it would not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state, adding that it “unconditionally opposes any violation of the rights of the Palestinian people, including Israel’s occupation policies, such as displacement or annexation of territory.”
Egypt will host an emergency Arab Summit in Cairo on February 27 to discuss Palestine-related issues, the foreign ministry said in a statement on February 8.
On the 9th, President Turkiyeh said, “The Gaza initiative put forward by the new US administration after being lobbied by the Israeli government is completely meaningless” and “No one had the power to remove Gazans from their homes.”
As US President Trump pushes forward with the Gaza initiative, there are observations that the “Abraham Accords,” which was one of his signature achievements during his first term, may be damaged.
“The Abraham Accord” is an agreement brokered by the US in 2020 with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and others to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and Trump has been trying to expand and finalize it to include Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations.
