The British newspaper, Financial Times, said that US President Donald Trump has outdone himself by announcing his most reckless plan yet, after threatening to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal, and then setting his sights on Gaza, the Palestinian territory destroyed by the Israeli war.
The newspaper stated in its editorial yesterday that Trump’s proposal to displace the 2.2 million residents of Gaza to other places, with the United States taking control of the sector in a “long-term ownership,” is as immoral as it is dangerous.
According to the newspaper, it would be easy to dismiss Trump’s comments as just another performance statement. The plan is so ridiculous that it is unlikely to ever see the light of day.
However, it considered that the mere fact that the US President revealed it to the international media, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, highlights the irresponsible way in which the most powerful leader in the world conducts his foreign policy.
The British newspaper considered that Trump, the alleged “merchant,” views the world as an open market in which everything can be traded as bargaining chips, without any regard for the consequences.
“This is not a game that America’s allies can afford to play, as it creates fear and uncertainty that will harm Washington’s global standing and weaken its network of alliances,” it said.
The newspaper warned that US control of Gaza would violate all international rules, and any US military action in the Strip would contradict Trump’s own promise to keep US forces out of combat zones in the Middle East, bring to mind the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, and destroy any hopes Trump has of achieving a grand deal that would normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and “Israel.”
It also stressed that the forced mass expulsion of Gaza’s residents would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing, and that this move would revive memories of 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were displaced during the war that accompanied the declaration of the occupation state on their usurped lands.
