Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former director general of the Saudi intelligence agency, wrote a letter to US President Donald Trump in the National newspaper after his call to displace Palestinians from Gaza, telling him that “The Palestinian people are not illegal immigrants to be deported to other lands.”
He stressed that “The lands are their lands and the houses that Israel destroyed are their homes, and they will rebuild them as they have done after previous Israeli onslaughts on them.”
Al-Faisal added: “Most of the people of Gaza are refugees, driven out of their homes in what is now Israel and the West Bank by the previous Israeli genocidal assault on them in the 1948 and 1967 wars.”
“If they are to be moved from Gaza, they should be allowed to return to their homes and to their orange and olive groves in Haifa, Jaffa and other towns and villages from which they fled or were forcibly driven out by the Israelis,” he stated.
Referring to settlers in the Palestinian territories, the Saudi prince said: “Many of the tens of thousands of immigrants who came to Palestine from Europe and other places after the Second World War stole Palestinian homes and land, terrorised the inhabitants and engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.”
He also noted that the US and the UK “the victors of the war, stood by and even facilitated the murderous evictions of the Palestinians from their homes and lands.”
Regarding Trump’s announcement to work to bring peace to the region, Al-Faisal stressed that “your declared intent to bring peace to Palestine is much lauded in our part of the world. I respectfully suggest that the way to do that is to give the Palestinians their inalienable right to self-determination and a state with its capital in East Jerusalem, as envisaged in UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 and 194 and Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the Arab Peace Initiative.”
The letter comes after US President Donald Trump’s statements on Tuesday, during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, announcing that the US seeks to take control of the Gaza Strip, which has been devastated by a 15-month Israel’s bombing campaign, and to transfer its residents to other countries and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump stated that Gaza’s residents can move to Jordan or Egypt or other countries, despite both countries rejecting such plans.
MEM
