Secretary of State Marco Rubio attempted to clarify President Donald Trump’s radical assertion the US should “take over” and “own” Gaza by saying that Trump was only offering for the US “to become responsible for the reconstruction of that area” and for Gazans to temporarily move out during the process.
“The only thing President Trump has done, very generously, in my view, is offer the United States’ willingness to step in, clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction that’s on the ground, clean it up of all these unexploded munitions,” Rubio said at a news conference in Guatemala City with Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo,
He said “in the meantime, the people living there, the people who call that home will not be able to live there while you have crews coming in and removing debris, while you have munitions being removed, etc.”
Rubio’s comments differ from Trump’s comments on Tuesday, when he said that “I hope that we can do something where (Gazans) wouldn’t want to go back — who would want to go back?”
Rubio acknowledged that the details of such a plan “would have to be worked out among multiple partner nations.”
“Seriously, it was not meant as a hostile move,” said Rubio. “It was meant as a, I think, a very generous move, the offer to rebuild and to be in charge of the rebuilding of a place many parts of which, right now, even if people move back, they would have nowhere to live safely, because there are still unexploded munitions and debris and rubble.”
Rubio did not comment on whether or how Palestinians would be allowed to return to Gaza if relocated. Opponents of the plan in the US and internationally have said it would amount to ethnic cleansing.
