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Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Thursday that he had instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare a plan to facilitate the voluntary departure of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
The statement comes in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal this week that Gaza’s population be relocated to Egypt, Jordan and additional countries.
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“The plan will include exit options at land crossings as well as special arrangements for exit by sea and air,” said Katz. “I welcome U.S. President Donald Trump’s bold plan. The residents of Gaza should be allowed to enjoy the freedom of exit and migration as is customary everywhere in the world.”
Hamas, Katz added, is “now holding them hostage, extorting money from them using humanitarian aid, and preventing their exit from Gaza.”
Katz went on to state that “countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway and others, which have made false allegations against Israel’s actions in Gaza, should by any account allow every Gazan resident to enter their territory. Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse to do so. There are countries like Canada, which has a regulated immigration program, that have expressed a desire in the past to absorb residents from Gaza.”
Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, on Thursday rejected Katz’s suggestion that Spain accept Gazans. In an interview with Spanish radio station RNE, Albares said that “Gazans’ land is Gaza and Gaza must be part of the future Palestinian state.”
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On Tuesday, Trump doubled down on his earlier suggestion that nearly two million Palestinians should be relocated from Gaza to new homes elsewhere so that the enclave could be rebuilt.
“You build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, like someplace where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re going to end up dying,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in Washington, D.C., with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At a press conference last week, Trump said Gaza was “literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”
Responding to Trump’s remarks on Tuesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich tweeted a passage from Psalms 126:3 in Hebrew: “Then they will say among the nations: ‘The Lord has done great things with these; the Lord has done great things for us, we were glad.’”
Smotrich then wrote, again in Hebrew, “and even better, and even better. Thank you, President Trump,” before transitioning to English alongside American and Israeli flag emojis: “Together, we will make the world great again.”
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