DONALD Trump’s officials have walked back on some parts of the US President’s proposal to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza.
At a White House briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt hailed Trump’s Gaza proposal as historic “outside of the box” thinking despite international condemnation of his comments.
However, Leavitt said that the president had not committed to putting “boots on the ground” in Gaza despite Trump refusing to rule out sending US troops to occupy the territory.
Leavitt also declined to rule out the use of US troops in Gaza.
She also walked back Trump's earlier comments that Palestinians needed to be permanently resettled in neighbouring countries, saying instead that they should be “temporarily relocated”.
Trump said he would support resettling Palestinians “permanently” but did not go into further details on how a resettlement process could be implemented on Tuesday, adding that Gaza could become the “riviera of the Middle East”.
Meanwhile, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said Trump’s plan was not meant as a “hostile move”, but rather a generous gesture aimed at rebuilding the territory.
Trump’s remarks at a joint press conference with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday where he said the US would “take over” Gaza and “own it” have faced fierce criticism from across the world.
The American president told journalists that “the only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative”.
First Minister John Swinney condemned Trump’s comments, saying “there must be no ethnic cleansing”.
Swinney added that only a “proper two-state solution will bring lasting peace” as he took to social media to express his shock and concern over Trump’s comments.
He said: “After months of collective punishment and the death of over 40,000 in Gaza, any suggestion Palestinians should be removed from their home is unacceptable and dangerous.”
Echoing Swinney’s comments, former first minister Humza Yousaf was also strongly critical of Trump's remarks.
Yousaf, whose parents-in-law were trapped in Gaza for a number of weeks in 2023 during Israel's assault, said: “What Trump calls ‘permanent resettlement’ is what the rest of the world should call ethnic cleansing.”
He added: “Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza. Period.”
The SNP’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, spoke out after the US president’s calls for the population of Gaza to be forcibly removed.
Talking to the BBC on Wednesday Stephen Flynn said: “I'm outraged. What we have is a president, a populist president who's parading as some sort of peacemaker in Palestine – but when you unpick his language and you get your way through the myriad of words that he's saying, essentially, he's talking about breaching the Geneva Convention. He's using words that are tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
“He's talking like some sort of colonial dictator from the past who can decide what they want to do and when they want to do it anywhere in the world.
“I think for those of us in politics who believe in something, for those of us who have a moral compass, we need to be willing to be blunt and upfront with our friends and allies when it comes to this and say, that's not good enough, no more, that's not happening.”
