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Meanwhile, the spokesman for the Palestinian presidency asserted that “Palestine, with its land, history and holy sites, is not for sale”.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh also said the Palestinians would “will not give up an inch of their land”, whether in Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
“The Palestinian people and their leadership will not allow the repetition of the catastrophes of 1948 and 1967, and will thwart any plan aimed at liquidating their just cause through investment projects whose place is neither in Palestine nor on its land.”
The 1948 “Nakba”, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinian flee or driven from their homes before and during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel.
Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war along with Gaza, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.
Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, though it retained control of its shared border, airspace and shoreline, giving it effective control of the movement of people and goods. The UN still regards Gaza as Israeli-occupied territory because of the level of control Israel has.
On Wednesday, Jordan’s king expressed its “rejection of any attempts to annex land or displace Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank”, while Egypt’s foreign minister stressed the importance of reconstruction “without the Palestinians leaving the Gaza Strip”.
Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said Trump’s plan was “absurd” and would “only put oil on the fire” in the region.
The UN human rights office warned that any forcible transfer in, or deportation of, people from occupied territory was strictly prohibited under international law.
The UN’s secretary general also said it was “essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing” and stressed that Gaza would be an integral part of a future Palestinian state.
Antonio Guterres told a meeting in New York that the world had “seen a chilling, systematic dehumanisation and demonization of an entire people”.
