US President Donald Trump’s scheme for the Gaza Strip is ‘doomed’ to failure, says the head of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas.
‘We will bring them down as we brought down the projects before them,’ Khalil al-Hayya said on Monday.
Al-Hayya, who is also deputy head of the Hamas Political Bureau, was speaking during a commemoration of the 46th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Tehran.
On Sunday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was committed to buying and owning Gaza.
Trump noted, however, that he might allow some sections of the Palestinian land to be rebuilt by other states in West Asia.
‘I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it, other people may do it, through our auspices. But we’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back.’
‘Palestinian issue with the mentality of a real estate dealer is a recipe for failure,’ Hamas said in a statement in response to Trump’s adventurism.
Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq said Trump’s remarks were ‘absurd’ and reflected ‘deep ignorance of Palestine and the region.
‘Gaza is not a property to be sold and bought. It is an integral part of our occupied Palestinian land,’ he said.
On February 4th, Trump hosted Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, DC.
At a joint press conference there, Trump said he would take control of Gaza – possibly with the help of US troops – to create a ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.
He had earlier suggested that displaced Palestinians could be resettled in neighbouring Arab countries.
European allies of the US, as well as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China and Russia say they all commit to a two-state solution.
Washington’s European allies, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt have rejected Trump’s plot, reiterating calls for the so-called two-state solution.
Netanyahu backed Trump’s proposals in interviews on US TV.
The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned Netanyahu’s statements in the American media, as ‘deliberate misinformation’.
In a statement on Sunday, the ministry said: ‘Egypt confirms that these statements aim to cover up and distract attention from the blatant violations committed by Israel against civilians and the destruction of vital Palestinian facilities, including hospitals, educational institutions, and electricity and drinking water stations, as well as the use of siege and starvation as weapons against civilians.
‘Egypt completely rejects any statements aimed at displacing the Palestinian people to Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia, and expresses its solidarity with the brave people of Gaza who cling to their land despite all the horrors they face in defence of their just and legitimate cause.’
The ministry also reaffirmed its commitment to the steadfast Egyptian and Arab principles based on the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state on the borders of June 4th, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says displaced Palestinian families who returned to northern Gaza after the ceasefire deal have been ‘shocked’ by the ‘complete scale of destruction’ of their homes and neighbourhoods in Israeli strikes.
‘The families that I’ve spoken to this week here in the north of Gaza have been shocked by what they have returned to,’ Tess Ingram, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said in a post on X on Sunday.
‘They’ve been shocked by the complete scale of this destruction. Even after seeing photos and videos from the south, they hoped that their homes, their neighbourhoods, their communities, maybe had been spared.’
Ingram noted that children in particular have been traumatised by the Israeli war on Gaza.
‘And as they come back here and realise that’s not the case, the hope that they’ve been holding on to for 15 months crashes into a deep heaviness, and this is particularly traumatic for children, children who have endured so much already and are now coming back to communities without water and without health care, without the basics that they need to survive.’
During the 15 months of the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on Gaza that began in October 2023, at least 48,189 have been confirmed killed, and 111,640 others injured, most of them children and women.
According to UN figures, nine in 10 homes in the territory have been destroyed or damaged. Schools, hospitals, mosques, cemeteries, shops and offices have also been repeatedly hit.
At the start of the war, about 700,000 people were displaced from the north of Gaza and fled to the south, when the Israeli military issued mass evacuation orders.
On January 15, the Israeli regime, having failed to achieve any of its war objectives including the ‘elimination’ of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas or the release of captives, was forced to agree to a ceasefire deal with Hamas.
- A recent report revealed that Israeli forces used toxic gas to suffocate Palestinian fighters and captives in Gaza tunnels in the course of the bloody onslaught against the besieged coastal sliver.
The investigation by online +972 Magazine and Local Call news site said the occupation forces ‘intentionally weaponised toxic byproducts of bombs to suffocate’ Palestinian resistance fighters they believed were taking cover underground in the war.
The report is based on information derived from officers with the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate and the regime’s so-called internal security service, Shin Bet, who have been involved in tunnel targeting strikes since the onset of the Gaza genocidal war on October 7th, 2023.
The investigation found that occupation forces tried to ‘compensate for the army’s inability to pinpoint targets in Hamas’ subterranean tunnel network.”
The policy resulted in the killing of ‘triple-digit numbers’ of Palestinian civilians as ‘collateral damage’, while high-profile Hamas commanders were being sought out.
The report highlighted that some of these strikes ‘which were the deadliest in the war and often used American bombs, are known to have killed Israeli captives.’
‘Pinpointing a target inside a tunnel is hard, so you attack a (wide) radius,’ an Israeli Military Intelligence source told +972 and Local Call.
The source noted that the radius would be as large as ‘tens and sometimes hundreds of metres,’ meaning the bombardments collapsed multiple apartment buildings on their occupants without warning. This was referred to by Palestinians as ‘fire belts.’
- On Monday, Israel expanded shooting orders for its soldiers in the occupied West Bank in a move that has generated a high Palestinian death toll.
According to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, the so-called central command decided to implement the same shooting policy used during the campaign of genocide in Gaza to kill any unarmed Palestinian in the West Bank.
The Israeli soldiers taking part in the ongoing military assault said commander Avi Blot permitted them to shoot with the intent to kill Palestinians without resorting to arresting them.
‘The orders made it easier for soldiers to pull the trigger at the behest of Central Command Commander Avi Blot.’
Head of the West Bank Division, Yaki Dolf, ordered soldiers to shoot at any vehicle ‘coming from a combat zone’ and heading toward a checkpoint.
On Sunday, two Palestinians were killed in the West Bank when Israeli soldiers opened fire on a car approaching a military checkpoint.
Israeli forces earlier shot and killed an eight-months pregnant Palestinian mother and her unborn baby during a raid in the Nur Shams refugee camp.
According to the Israeli daily, soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields while searching buildings for explosives, the same tactic used by the military in Gaza.
Israeli forces continue their raids across the occupied West Bank, targeting local Palestinians and their properties.
Since January 21, the Israeli regime has conducted military operations in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tammun in the northern West Bank, and has killed more than 30 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry.
Israeli soldiers had earlier revealed appalling accounts of the notorious ‘kill zone’ in the Netzarim Corridor of the besieged Gaza Strip.