The US ambassador to Israel said on Saturday there was no plan underway to force Palestinians out of Gaza, after Israeli ministers laid out ideas on how to expel the war-battered territory’s two million people.
“I can tell you categorically there is no plan of the Israelis to displace people out of Gaza against their will,” Ambassador Mike Huckabee told reporters as he visited Palestinian-Americans in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir laid out a plan on Thursday that aims to see the departure of 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza in the first year, followed by the rest of the roughly two million residents over the following six years.
His remarks came a day after Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel was ready to remove Palestinians from Gaza by sea and land but was waiting for the United States, which he said was discussing where the population would go. Katz, without citing his source, claimed 80 per cent of people in Gaza wanted to leave but that Hamas was preventing them.
Huckabee said that President Donald Trump’s administration — which has made hostility to international migration a central priority — wanted to give Palestinians the option to leave by choice.
