Meloni Downplays Trump’s Statements on Gaza
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who is visiting Saudi Arabia on Monday, said she does not believe Donald Trump has a “specific plan” for removing Palestinians from Gaza, but she welcomed discussions about the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. president said on Saturday that he wanted Jordan and Egypt to take in a number of Gaza’s residents. He added: “We are probably talking about one and a half million people. We are simply clearing the entire area. As you know, over the centuries, this region has witnessed many conflicts. I don’t know, but something has to happen.”
However, the Palestinian leaders, the Arab League, as well as Jordan and Egypt quickly rejected this idea.
Meloni, who attended Trump’s inauguration and hopes to serve as a bridge between the U.S. administration and the European Union, said it was a “complicated” issue.
She told reporters during her visit to Saudi Arabia: “Trump is right when he says that the reconstruction of Gaza is clearly one of the main challenges we face, but to succeed, there needs to be significant involvement from the international community,” according to AFP.
She added, “As for the refugee issue, I don’t think we are facing a specific plan. I believe we are witnessing discussions with regional actors who certainly need to be involved.”
Trump had stated that the region has become “devastated,” suggesting that the relocation of Gaza’s residents could be “temporary or long-term.”
But any attempt to remove Palestinians from their land brings to mind the memory of the “Nakba” of 1948 when hundreds of thousands were displaced during the establishment of Israel.
Meloni said, “These are very complex issues, but discussing them, even at an informal level with regional actors, means in my view that we want to seriously work on the issue of Gaza’s reconstruction.”
For its part, the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Monday that Palestinian residents of Gaza should not be expelled, in response to Trump’s remarks.
A spokesperson for the ministry, responding to a request for comment on Trump’s statements, said that Berlin agrees with the views of the “European Union, our Arab partners, and the United Nations, that the Palestinian people should not be expelled from Gaza, and Gaza should not be permanently occupied or recolonized by Israel.”
Most of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced repeatedly due to the war that broke out after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
