The Palestinian Authority said it won’t allow Palestinian rights “to be infringed upon” the day after President Trump floated the idea of the U.S. taking over the Gaza Strip.
“We will not allow the rights of our people, for which we have struggled for decades and made great sacrifices to achieve, to be infringed upon,” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said after Trump’s surprising remarks at the White House, according to Wafa, a Palestinian state-run news agency.
“These calls represent a serious violation of international law,” Abbas stated, adding that “peace and stability will not be achieved in the region without the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital on the borders of June 4, 1967, based on the two-state solution.”
Standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference, Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. could overtake Gaza, clear it from unexploded bombs and assist in its economic development.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too — whether we’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out,” Trump said during the press conference.
“I think you’ll make that into an international, unbelievable place … I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East … this could be so magnificent,” he said.
Several U.S. allies around the world promptly rejected the idea and reaffirmed their support for a two-state solution, including Saudi Arabia, which stated the potential displacement of Palestinians is a nonstarter and it offers no room for compromise.
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia also stresses what it had previously announced regarding its absolute rejection of infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, annexation of Palestinian lands or efforts to displace the Palestinian people from their land,” Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry wrote in a statement issued shortly after Trump’s address from the White House.
Abbas hailed Saudi Arabia’s response in light of Trump’s comment about the future of the war-torn enclave, where nearly 2 million Palestinians live and are hopeful to form an independent state.
The Palestinian Authority, which was forced out of Gaza by Palestinian militant group Hamas, governs some parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
