A day after President Donald Trump said the US would take over the Gaza Strip, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing and reaffirmed the two-State solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict.
“In the search for solutions, we must not make the problem worse. It is vital to stay true to the bedrock of international law. It is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing,” Guterres said here Wednesday in his first response to Trump’s surprise announcement that came from the White House during a joint press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Guterres, in his remarks to the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, reaffirmed the two-State solution, saying “any durable peace will require tangible, irreversible and permanent progress toward the two-state solution, an end to the occupation, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, with Gaza as an integral part.
“A viable, sovereign Palestinian State living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel is the only sustainable solution for Middle East stability,” Guterres said.
Earlier, the Secretary General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric was asked at the daily press briefing if Guterres’ comments at the Committee on avoiding ethnic cleansing and support for a two-state solution can be seen as a response to what Trump had said. “That would be a fair assumption,” Dujarric said.
When asked if the Secretary-General believes Trump’s plan for the US to take over Gaza is ethnic cleansing, Dujarric said any forced displacement of people is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
Permanent Observer of the State of Palestine to the United Nations Riyad Mansour said at the UN meeting that “we need to rebuild the Gaza Strip. The Gaza Strip is a very precious component of the land of the State of Palestine. It is part of our homeland, and we don’t have a homeland other than the state of Palestine.
“So therefore we are not looking for other homelands or other countries. For those who want us to have a happy place and safe place, we will be delighted to return to our homes inside the State of Israel, this is where we originally were kicked from. If they want to do that for us, we will welcome it. But short of that, Gaza is part of the state of Palestine. The West Bank is part of the state of Palestine. So is East Jerusalem.
“There is no power on Earth that can remove the Palestinian people from our ancestral homeland including Gaza,” Mansour said.
Trump on Tuesday said, “US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. 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, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area, do a real job, do something different.”
To Trump’s proposal on Gaza, Netanyahu had added that Israel’s goal is to make sure that “Gaza never poses a threat to Israel again.”
He said Trump is “taking it to a much higher level. He sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism, so many attacks against us, so many trials and so many tribulations. He has a different idea. And I think it’s worth paying attention to this. We’re talking about it. He’s exploring it with his people, with his staff. I think it’s something that could change history, and it’s worthwhile really pursuing this avenue.”
Describing the Gaza Strip as “a symbol of death and destruction”, Trump had said it has been “so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there.
“It’s been an unlucky place for a long time. Being in its presence just has not been good, and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there,” he said.
“Instead, we should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and frankly, bad luck. This could be paid for by neighbouring countries of great wealth.”
Trump also said that the only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is because they have no alternative. “It’s right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down. They’re living under fallen concrete that’s very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety, and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony, instead of having to go back and do it again.”
Dujarric said the Secretary-General had first heard about Trump’s plan on the news.
For Washington, supporting a negotiated two-state solution has continued to be a core US policy objective. The US Government has remained committed to a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “believes that Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve equal measures of freedom, security and prosperity,” the State Department said.
The United States was the first country to recognize Israel as a state in 1948, and the first to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017.
