ANKARA (AFP): Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday no one had the power to remove Gazans from their war-devastated homeland, dismissing Donald Trump’s plan to expel the Palestinians and let the US take control.
“No one has the power to remove the people of Gaza from their eternal homeland that has been around for thousands of years,” he told a late-night news conference at Istanbul airport before flying to Malaysia.
“Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem belong to the Palestinians.”
Trump’s proposal to oust more than two million Palestinians living in Gaza and redevelop it prompted a global backlash that has enraged the Arab and Muslim world.
The US president announced his proposal on Tuesday at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hailed it as “the first good idea that I’ve heard” on what to do with the tiny war-torn territory.
But Erdogan appeared to dismiss it as worthless.
“The proposals on Gaza put forward by the new US administration under pressure from the Zionist leadership have nothing worth discussing from our point of view,” he said.
In an interview with Palestinian television earlier on Sunday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan ruled out the idea of forcing out the Palestinians from Gaza.
“The displacement of Palestinians is unacceptable,” he told the station in remarks quoted by Turkish state news agency Anadolu, describing Trump’s proposal as historically ignorant.
The billionaire businessman said he would make the war-battered territory “unbelievable” by removing unexploded bombs and rubble and economically redeveloping it.
But he has not said how he envisaged removing its inhabitants.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it,” Trump said.
Trump’s Gaza plan ‘revolutionary, creative’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday praised a proposal from President Donald Trump for US control of Gaza and the displacement of its population as “revolutionary”, striking a triumphant tone in a statement to his cabinet following his return to Israel from Washington.
Trump set out a plan earlier this week to move the Gazans out of the territory to other countries in the region, while the United States would take charge of redeveloping it, sparking a diplomatic backlash.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinians were on Sunday able to cross the Netzarim Corridor, a strategic zone cutting the narrow territory in two, after Israeli troops were said to have withdrawn.
“Israeli forces have dismantled their positions… and completely withdrawn their tanks from the Netzarim Corridor on Salaheddin Road, allowing vehicles to pass freely in both directions,” said an official from the Hamas-run interior ministry.
AFP journalists saw no troops in the area, as cars, buses, pickup trucks and donkey carts travelled north and south along the road.
Gaza resident Mahmoud al-Sarhi said “arriving at the Netzarim Corridor meant death until this morning”.
This is “the first time I saw our destroyed house”, he told AFP of his home in the nearby Zeitun area.
“The entire area is in ruins. I cannot live here.”
A senior Hamas official said the Israeli withdrawal from Netzarim had been scheduled for Sunday under the terms of the truce that took effect on January 19.
– ‘I thought you were dead’ –
Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces had shot dead three civilians in Gaza City north of Netzarim on Sunday.
The military said it had fired “warning shots” and hit Palestinians who had approached troops.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and the ceasefire agreed ahead of Trump’s inauguration has largely halted the fighting.
The 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the war has killed at least 48,181 people in the territory.
Under the current ceasefire, Israel and Hamas on Saturday completed their fifth hostage-prisoner exchange, with three Israeli hostages and 183 Palestinian prisoners released.
The release also brought the first indication in 16 months that hostage Alon Ohel is alive.
But a statement from his family released by campaign group Hostages and Missing Families Forum added: “He is wounded and not receiving medical treatment.”
Halfway around the world in Bangkok on Sunday, five Thai farm workers held hostage by Hamas and freed in an earlier swap wept with joy as they returned home.
“You are back, I thought you were dead,” the grandfather of 33-year-old Watchara Sriaoun told him.
– ‘Unacceptable’ –
Trump sparked global outrage by suggesting on Tuesday the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants.
Upon his return to Israel from the United States, Netanyahu reiterated his support for the proposal during a cabinet meeting.
“President Trump came with a completely different, much better vision for Israel — a revolutionary, creative approach that we are currently discussing,” the Israeli prime minister said.
“He is very determined to implement it, and I believe it opens up many, many possibilities for us,” he added.
Israel’s defence minister earlier in the week ordered the army to prepare for “voluntary” departures from Gaza.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday became the latest world leaders to denounce Trump’s plan.
“No one has the power to remove the people of Gaza from their eternal homeland,” Erdogan told journalists at Istanbul airport before flying to Malaysia.
“Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem belong to the Palestinians.”
Scholz, speaking during a pre-election debate, described Trump’s plan as “a scandal”, adding: “The relocation of a population is unacceptable and against international law.”
– ‘Fantasies’ –
With the region already on edge over Trump’s proposal, Netanyahu sparked fury when he said in a television interview that a Palestinian state — which he has long opposed — could be “in Saudi Arabia”.
The Saudi foreign ministry stressed its “categorical rejection to such statements”, while Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit said such ideas “are nothing more than mere fantasies or illusions”.
Egypt will host an Arab summit on February 27 to discuss “the latest serious developments” concerning the Palestinian territories, its foreign ministry said Sunday.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty was heading to Washington for talks, and Jordan’s King Abdullah II was due to meet Trump at the White House on February 11.
Israeli forces kill 3 in West Bank raid
The Palestinian health ministry reported that Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank shot dead three people on Sunday, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, while the military said it had “targeted terrorists” in a raid.
It later said military police had launched an investigation into the death of the pregnant woman.
Israeli forces launched an operation in the Nur Shams refugee camp, on the outskirts of Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, at dawn on Sunday, as part of an ongoing offensive in nearby camps, the military said.
The Palestinian health ministry said 23-year-old Sundus Jamal Muhammad Shalabi was killed in a pre-dawn incident, with her husband Yazan Abu Shola critically injured.
The mother-to-be was dead when she arrived at a local hospital, the ministry said.
“Medical teams were unable to save the baby’s life due to the (Israeli) occupation preventing the transfer of the injured to the hospital,” it added.
When asked by AFP about the shooting of the pregnant woman in Nur Shams, the Israeli military said “following the incident an investigation was opened by the Military Police Criminal Investigation Division”
Murad Alyan, a member of the popular committee in the Nur Shams camp, told AFP that the couple was “trying to leave the camp before the occupation forces advanced into it. They were shot while they were inside their car.”
The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned what it described as “a crime of execution committed by the occupation forces”, accusing Israeli forces of “deliberately targeting defenceless civilians”.
The health ministry later said a second woman, 21-year-old Rahaf Fouad Abdullah al-Ashqar was killed in a separate incident in Nur Shams.
A source in the camp’s popular committee said she was killed and her father wounded when the “Israeli forces used explosives to open the door of their family house”.
And late on Sunday the health ministry announced that a third Palestinian, Iyas Adli Fakhri al-Akhras, 20, had been killed “after being shot by Israeli forces” in the camp.
The Israeli military told AFP it was looking into the incidents.
AFP footage from Nur Shams showed army bulldozers clearing a path in front of buildings in the densely packed camp, which is home to about 13,000 people.
The Israeli military earlier said its forces were “expanding the operation in northern Samaria”, using the biblical term for the north of the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.
“The combat team of the Ephraim Brigade began operations in Nur Shams,” the military said in a statement, adding that soldiers had “targeted several terrorists and arrested additional individuals in the area”.
The Palestinian health ministry has said at least 70 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank this year.
Violence there has escalated since the October 2023 outbreak of war in the Gaza Strip.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least 887 Palestinians including militants have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers in the West Bank since the Gaza war began.
At least 32 Israelis, including some soldiers, have been killed in Palestinian attacks or confrontations during Israeli operations in the West Bank over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.
