US President Donald Trump has made no commitment to send US troops to the Gaza Strip as part of his proposal for Washington to take control of the Palestinian enclave, the White House said, quoted by Reuters, BTA reports.
According to the words of presidential press secretary Caroline Levitt to reporters, the US leader believes that the US should participate in the reconstruction of Gaza "to ensure regional stability".
"This does not mean sending troops to Gaza", she said.
Levitt added that Trump wants Palestinians living in Gaza to be “temporarily relocated“ so that the enclave can be rebuilt.
In a speech yesterday at the White House in the presence of visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump said he would support efforts to permanently resettle Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to places where they can live without fear of violence, and added that the United States "will establish control over the war-torn Gaza Strip" after the Palestinians are resettled elsewhere and develop it economically.
The United States "will not fund the reconstruction of Gaza," Levitt said, quoted by Agence France-Presse.
President Trump said that "the United States will not fund the reconstruction of Gaza." "His government will work with our partners in the region to rebuild Gaza," she said.
Trump wants the Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip only temporarily until it is rebuilt, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said today.
He said the idea was "not hostile". "I think it was a very generous gesture to offer reconstruction and take responsibility for it" in Gaza, Rubio told reporters during a visit to Guatemala.
He said the Palestinian territory was in a "natural disaster" state and people can't live there because there's unexploded ordnance, debris and rubble, the Associated Press reports.
“In the meantime, obviously people are going to have to live somewhere while we rebuild it,“ said the top American diplomat.