EDITORIAL: The US and Israel’s plan to expel Gaza Palestinians from their ancestral lands has rallied regional states behind Palestinians.
The first country to react sharply to President Donald Trump’s absurd claim to “take over” and “own” Gaza was Saudi Arabia — with which until recently the Jewish state had hoped to normalise relations — reiterating its unequivocal rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.
But the shameless arrogance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows no limits. “The Saudis”, he suggested subsequently in an interview with an Israeli TV channel, “can create a Palestinians state in Saudi Arabia. They have a lot of land over there.” Riyadh reacted angrily to these provocative remarks, saying “his extremist, occupying mentality does not understand what the Palestinian land means” to Palestinians.
The exchange also drew strong reaction from other Arab states, including Egypt and Jordan (both recipients of financial assistance from the US for keeping peace with Israel), Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq as well as a regional intergovernmental body, the Gulf Cooperation Council.
On Sunday, Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar issued a statement reaffirming solidarity with Saudi and Palestinian brothers.
Netanyahu’s remarks, he said, were deeply offensive, and reiterated that Pakistan wants establishment of an independent, sovereign and contiguous state based on the pre-1967 borders with al Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.
Dar also had a telephonic conversation with his Iranian counterpart, Seyyed Abbas Araghchi. Among other related issues they discussed convening of an extraordinary meeting of the OIC foreign ministers on the situation in Gaza.
He had a similar talk with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Ahmed Mohamed Abdelatty. Given the gravity of the challenge at hand, the OIC member state should be represented at the highest levels of government. Better still, Egypt has already announced it would host an emergency Arab summit on February 27 to discuss “new and dangerous developments” — a reference to President Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza.
Thus far, most of the Arab states keen to forge closer ties with the US saw no harm in normalising relations with the colonial settler state that Israel is, but are wary now of the American-Israeli plan to uproot Palestinians from their homeland and transplant them in the region’s other countries. They fear that this would destabilise their own societies to the point of becoming an existential threat.
They therefore seem to be genuinely interested in taking a united stand against President Trump’s bizarre plan for Gaza. Illustrative of the mood in Riyadh is a tongue in cheek suggestion a member of the Saudi Shura Council, Yousef bin Trad Al-Saadoun, made in a recent newspaper article, proposing that President Trump should relocate Israelis to Alaska, and later to Greenland “after annexing it.” A good suggestion since there is a lot of uninhabited land over there.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025