On Sunday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich raised the possibility of the imminent implementation of US President Donald Trump’s plan to displace the Palestinian people from Gaza. “It’s a process I hope will begin in the coming weeks,” Smotrich told Israel’s Channel 12 news station.
“Even if it’s slow at first, it will gradually pick up pace and intensify,” adding it will be a “huge logistical operation to get such vast numbers of people out of here.”
Smotrich made these remarks as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with both men pledging to work together to implement Trump’s plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
“We discussed Trump’s bold vision for Gaza’s future and will work to ensure that vision becomes a reality,” Netanyahu said following his meeting with Rubio. “We have a common strategy,” he added.
For his part, the American secretary of state hailed Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Gaza and annex it as an American territory. “It may have shocked and surprised many,” Rubio said, adding “what cannot continue is the same cycle where we repeat over and over again and wind up in the exact same place.”
Earlier this month, Trump declared that the Gaza Strip “should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that lived a miserable existence there.” Trump called for “other countries” to “build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza.”