International
Trump says that the US will control Gaza and Hamas responds that it will not allow it
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States “will take control” of the Gaza Strip in the long term and rebuild it, turning it into the new “Middle East River”, after permanently resettling the Palestinians in other countries.
“I don’t want to be funny or smart, but the Middle East Riviera… This could be so magnificent,” Trump said at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
After this announcement, the former Israeli Minister of National Security, the settler and anti-Arab Itamar Ben Gvir, urged Netanyahu to announce “the adoption of the plan as soon as possible” to expel the Palestinians from Gaza.
Hamas, for its part, has said that it will not allow the plans announced by Trump to be fulfilled and described his proposal as “racist.”
“The (Palestinian) people who have stood firm for 15 months (of war) against the most powerful military machine and the most criminal Army, and who thwarted the attempt to displace it, will remain attached to their land and will not accept that plan no matter the cost,” Hamas spokesman Abdul Latif al Qanou said in a statement.
“The American racist position is consistent with the position of the Israeli extreme right to displace our people and liquidate their cause,” continued Qanou, who called on the international community to reject Trump’s statements and support the Palestinians’ right to self-determination in the face of Israeli occupation.
China has expressed its opposition to the position of the US president and has reiterated the need to seek a path towards a “two-state solution” while the Kremlin has preferred to stay on the sidelines.
“We oppose the forced displacement of the residents of the Gaza Strip. China hopes that all parties will accept the ceasefire and that a two-state political solution will be returned,” Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian said at a press conference.
The Chinese spokesman added in the daily appearance, the first after a week suspended by the Lunar New Year holidays, that the parties involved must “push the Palestinian issue back towards the right path.”
“That involves an arrangement based on the ‘two-state solution’ that aims at lasting peace in the Middle East,” he warned.
On the other hand, Russia, with which the United States maintains a tense relationship, refrained from criticizing the proposal of the US president, although he clarified that they “have heard” it and that they have also followed the statements in this regard from Egypt or Jordan, countries that also oppose the intentions of the tycoon.
For his part, the president of the Palestinian National Authority (ANP), Mahmud Abbas, rejected the proposal and recalled that the enclave is an “integral part” of the Palestinian State.
“We will not allow the rights of our people, for which we have been fighting for decades and for whom we have made great sacrifices, to be violated,” Abbas said in a message collected by the official Palestinian news agency, Wafa.
In his message, Abbas said that the rights of the Palestinians are not negotiable, and that no one can make decisions about the future of the Palestinians except themselves.
The president, who also chairs the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), also thanked Saudi Arabia for its rejection of the forced expulsion of Gazans, and asked the UN to take “urgent” measures to protect international resolutions, which recognize the right to return of Palestinians displaced by Israel.
Huséin al Sheij, the general secretary of the PLO and Abbas’s right-hand man, also expressed his rejection of Trump’s plan and said that the two-state solution, one Israeli and one Palestinian, is the only guarantee of peace in the Middle East.
“Here we were born, here we live and here we will die,” the official said in a message.
Trump did not rule out deploying US troops to support the reconstruction of Gaza and assured that the US will do “whatever it takes” to complete that project.
This is the first time that Trump, who campaigned with the promise of taking the US out of the wars in the Middle East, speaks of a direct long-term involvement in Gaza and also the first time he suggests that the Palestinians should be permanently resettled in other countries.
Specifically, at the press conference, a journalist asked him what this US occupation would consist of and if it would be prolonged, to which Trump responded in the affirmative and said that he contemplates a “long-term ownership position” on the Gaza Strip.
The Palestinians claim the Gaza Strip as part of a future state along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem, so the displacement of the two million people living in the enclave and their real estate development by the US would put an end to the concept of the Palestinian State as it has been conceived so far.
Asked about it, Trump avoided expressing support for the “two-state solution”, which has been the traditional US policy on the conflict for decades, and reiterated his idea that the people of Gaza be resettled in other countries.
Since his return to power on January 20, Trump has reiterated this proposal on several occasions and insisted that Jordan and Egypt should accept more Palestinian refugees from Gaza, an idea flatly rejected by those two countries, as well as by the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League.
For the first time, in statements to the press at the beginning of his meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval Office, Trump suggested that this resettlement should be “permanent” and tried to frame it as a humanitarian measure, stating that it was impossible to believe that someone would want to remain in a territory devastated by war, which he described as a “demolition zone”.
During the meeting, in addition to the future of Gaza, both leaders talked about the fragile ceasefire with Hamas, the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and the growing tension with Iran.
The visit was an international endorsement for Netanyahu, who left Israel for the first time since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant against him in November, a decision that Washington has strongly condemned and whose jurisdiction it does not recognize.
Netanyahu took from Trump not only comments that satisfy the Israeli far-right, but also concrete actions in support of Israel.
Before meeting with Netanyahu, Trump signed an executive order to continue suspending funds to the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) and end US participation in the United Nations Human Rights Council, which Netanyahu accuses of being partial against Israel.
International
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
Former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe on Monday requested that the Supreme Court restore his freedom while he appeals the historic 12-year house arrest sentence he received for bribery and procedural fraud.
Uribe, the most prominent figure of Colombia’s right wing, was convicted last week by a lower court for attempting to bribe paramilitary members into denying his ties to the violent anti-guerrilla squads.
Since Friday, the 73-year-old has been under house arrest at his residence in Rionegro, about 30 km from Medellín. The judge justified the measure by citing a risk of flight.
However, Uribe’s defense team rejected that argument and formally petitioned the court to immediately lift the detention order, claiming it lacks legal basis.
Uribe, a dominant force in Colombian politics for decades, is now the first former president in the country’s history to be convicted and placed under arrest, found guilty of witness tampering and obstruction of justice to prevent links to paramilitary groups.
He has repeatedly denounced the trial as politically motivated, blaming pressure from the leftist government currently in power.
His political party, Centro Democrático, has called for nationwide protests on August 7 in support of Uribe, who remains popular for his hardline stance against guerrilla groups.
Uribe has until August 13 to submit his written appeal. The case will then move to the Bogotá High Court, which has until October 16 to uphold, overturn, or dismiss the sentence. If the deadline passes without a decision, the case will be archived.
International
U.S. Embassy staff restricted as gunfire erupts near compound in Port-au-Prince
The poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean is currently engulfed in a deep political crisis and a wave of violence driven by armed groups — a situation that an international security mission led by Kenya is attempting to stabilize.
Due to the worsening security conditions, the U.S. government has suspended all official movements of embassy personnel outside the compound in Port-au-Prince, the U.S. State Department announced Monday in a security alert posted on social media platform X.
“There are intense gunfights in the Tabarre neighborhood, near the U.S. Embassy,” the alert reads, urging the public to avoid the area.
Tabarre is a municipality located near Port-au-Prince International Airport, northeast of the Haitian capital.
According to a July report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, at least 3,141 people were killed in Haitibetween January 1 and June 30 of this year.
International
Israel says 136 food aid boxes airdropped into Gaza by six nations
The Israeli military announced on Sunday that 136 boxes of food aid were airdropped into Gaza by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Germany, and Belgium.
“In recent hours, six countries conducted air drops of 136 aid packages containing food for residents in the southern and northern Gaza Strip,” read the statement, which added that the operation was coordinated by COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing civil affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military emphasized that they will “continue working to improve the humanitarian response alongside the international community” and reiterated their stance to “refute false allegations of deliberate famine in Gaza.”
The announcement comes as UN agencies warn Gaza faces an imminent risk of famine. More than one in three residents go days without eating, and other nutrition indicators have dropped to their worst levels since the conflict began.
The agencies also noted the difficulty of “collecting reliable data in current conditions, as Gaza’s health systems —already devastated by nearly three years of conflict— are collapsing.”
Meanwhile, Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry reported on Sunday that hospitals in the enclave recorded six deaths from hunger and malnutrition on Saturday, all of them adults.
Uribe requests freedom amid appeal of historic bribery conviction
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