The UAE is among eight countries to strongly condemn remarks by Israel's National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Defence Minister Israel Katz about the displacement of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia also stood behind the condemnation in a joint statement by the foreign ministers of the eight countries. It rejected “any attempts or plans aimed at displacing the Palestinian people, whether within or outside the occupied Palestinian territory” and said calls for forced displacement could have “grave consequences”.
The ministers said such proposals “flagrantly violate principles of international law, including international humanitarian law”, and pose a "direct threat to the legitimate and inalienable rights of the Palestinian people”.
They stressed that Gaza is an "integral part of the occupied Palestinian territory” and called for the preservation of the unity of the Palestinian territories, including the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The ministers stressed that a two-state solution, with an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, was the only path to a "just and lasting peace”. The eight countries also urged the international community, particularly the UN Security Council, to confront attempts to impose a "new demographic or geographic reality” in Palestine.
Mr Ben-Gvir on Thursday presented a plan to illegally expel all Gazans to foreign countries, a policy he claimed was “realistic”. He said his proposal aimed to remove 250,000 Palestinians from the enclave in its first year, followed by the rest of its population of two million over six years. He said some countries were “ready” to take in Palestinians.
Arab countries have, over the years, rejected the forced displacement of Gazans and refused to take part in any such plan.
Mr Katz on Wednesday said that plans to expel Gazans “by any means” remained under discussion in Israel but were frozen by US President Donald Trump. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, on Saturday said there was no plan to force Palestinians to leave the enclave.
"I can tell you categorically there is no plan of the Israelis to displace people out of Gaza against their will," he told reporters in Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town in the occupied West Bank. "There is an open-mindedness [that] if people wish to leave, that they should have the right to leave. To incarcerate them in a place they don't want to be should be an absolute, I think ... disgrace.
"Nobody is suggesting that there will be forced displacement. The Israelis are not. The Americans are certainly not. I know of no one who supports that."
Israel continues to carry out attacks in Gaza despite a US-backed ceasefire that went into effect in October last year. Israel's offensive has devastated the enclave and displaced most of its population.
The war began in October 7, 2023, when Hamas led attacks that killed 1,200 people in Israel, while 240 were taken hostage. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's attacks on Gaza, health authorities in the enclave said.
Calls for the resettlement of Gazans have prompted fears among Palestinians of a renewed Nakba, the term applied to the displacement of hundreds of thousands after the 1948 war that followed the founding of the Israeli state.
A UN inquiry has determined that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, saying the killings, siege and destruction of the enclave were carried out with the intent to destroy Palestinian life there. Israel has rejected allegations of genocide claims its military campaign is against Hamas, not Gazan civilians.
