According to a Palestinian minister on Friday, US President Donald Trump’s plan to restore the Gaza Strip as a beautiful river is unacceptable unless it is for the Gazans themselves to live
Palestinian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian stated, “It’s very good to rebuild Gaza as a riviera—but with its people in it.”
Trump’s plan for Gaza calls for the US to annex the occupied Palestinian territory, relocate the Palestinians living there, and turn the war-torn region into a paradise for “world people.”
It is “unacceptable, by all means,” to relocate Gazans, according to Aghabekian.
“Let it become a riviera,” she said, “but for its people, who have been suffering for such a long time and deserve that their place becomes a riviera rather than a besieged place that smells of death.”
Aghabekian was in Geneva to address the UN Human Rights Council when she spoke to the ACANU, the association of UN journalists.
According to her, it would be a “natural development” for the Palestinian Authority to eventually govern the region rather than Hamas, a violent organisation.
“Palestinian national interests should supersede any other factional interests,” she added.
“The legitimate power of the state of Palestine and its arm of government would be used to manage Gaza. That is our perspective on Gaza’s future.
– ‘Gaza-isation’ of West Bank –
As talks resumed in Cairo on Friday, Hamas demanded that the international community put pressure on Israel to join the next stage of a truce that has essentially stopped the fighting in Gaza.
Aghabekian stated that the fragile truce, which went into force on January 19, “must be maintained at any cost.”
With Hamas holding lavish handover ceremonies, Israel has released its hostages from Gaza and released Palestinian inmates from Israeli imprisonment as a result of the ceasefire.
According to Aghabekian, hostages ought to be handled legally and with dignity.
“We would hope that there would be no more exhibitions of such parades in the future and that the release of the rest of the hostages and moving into the second phase takes place smoothly,” she said.
The ceasefire has resulted in the release of hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank, some of whom had been detained in Israeli prisons for years.
“These individuals require extensive rehabilitation. “There are many issues of concern because they have to integrate into a society that is already struggling and suffering,” Aghabekian stated.
In the longest ongoing offensive in the occupied region in 20 years, Israel’s military launched a massive incursion in the West Bank more than a month ago against what they claimed were Palestinian militants.
“The situation on the West Bank is extremely volatile,” Aghabekian stated.
“What we are being threatened with is the Gaza-isation of the West Bank, which means that people are afraid that the model that has been exercised on the Gaza Strip—the genocidal, atrocious, brutal attacks—are transferred to the West Bank.”
