"The risk of famine has been largely averted" in the enclave, "but breaking the ceasefire would quickly bring it back", the UN warned, quoted by the French newspaper "Monde". After a two-day visit to the Gaza Strip, Tom Fletcher, head of UN humanitarian operations, called on the radical Palestinian group "Hamas" and Israel to adhere to the ceasefire agreement, "which saved the lives of many people", noting that in the Palestinian enclave "conditions are still terrible", the French publication writes.
At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as "revolutionary" the statement by US President Donald Trump that America could take control of Gaza, notes another French newspaper - "Liberation". Trump is determined to put his plan into practice, believes the Israeli prime minister, quoted by this publication.
The Israeli military has withdrawn from the Netzarim corridor in Gaza, which divides the Gaza Strip into northern and southern parts, the British newspaper "Guardian" emphasizes in turn. Israel created the corridor within a few weeks of the start of the war on October 7, 2023. and used it as a military zone during the fighting, the newspaper recalls.
After the ceasefire came into effect last month, Israel began allowing Palestinians to pass through Netzarim to return to their homes in the devastated northern part of the strip, with hundreds of thousands of people passing through, the Guardian notes.
Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanua said the withdrawal showed that the Islamist movement had "forced the enemy to submit to the demands" of the Palestinians and had destroyed "the Israeli government's illusion of achieving complete victory," the British publication notes.
However, Israel warns that it will not agree to a full withdrawal until Hamas's military and political potential is eliminated, the newspaper notes. "Guardian".
"It is time to forget about the two-state solution for Gaza", writes in an article published by the British newspaper "The Telegraph", Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees should be closed and Palestinians should be treated like all other refugees by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the leading expert from the Republican Party believes.
The scandal that followed Trump's statement about the plans for Gaza overshadowed the fact that the US president touched on two fundamentally different issues, Bolton points out.
"First - and most strangely, he claimed that Israel would hand over control of Gaza to the US, which would "own" it and will turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East". Second, and much more important, was Trump's claim that resettling the population of Gaza into the strip is the wrong approach, at least in the short term. This distinction is crucial in assessing Trump's statements until he changes his positions again, which may happen as you read this article," notes the former adviser to the US president.
Gaza itself is a historical incident that reflects the military reality since the end of the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, the author of the opinion in "Telegraph" states. He adds that the strip is simply part of the ancient Mediterranean route to Egypt, but is not economically viable in itself. Trump's second proposal for Gaza is not new, but if adopted, it would fundamentally change the Middle East - including by dealing the final blow to the "two-state solution."
"It had become a mantra long before the barbaric attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and since then it has not been taken seriously in Israel. Yet, in the absence of serious efforts to find an alternative, that mantra has remained the leading position," Bolton continues.
"Those days are over. But if the two-state solution is over, an alternative must be found, Bolton notes, recalling that he himself proposed a "three-state solution": Gaza returned to Egypt, and Israel and Jordan would share sovereignty over the West Bank. This would protect Israel's security, and the Palestinians would be included in viable economies with a real future," the expert added.
Neither Cairo nor Amman welcomed the transfer of a potentially restive population under their jurisdiction. But the tangible difficulty in resolving the Palestinian issue should not lead regional states and interested external powers to return to rebuilding multi-story refugee camps in Gaza, the Republican said.
"Such an action would be associated with enormous costs for clearing the rubble and unexploded ordnance, not to mention the elimination of Hamas" tunnels. All of this would inevitably lead to another October 7, which is clearly unacceptable", Bolton pointed out in the pages of the British newspaper "The Telegraph".
"The option is to change the way in which the Palestinians have been treated for more than seven decades. The Palestinian Refugee Agency, which is in effect a branch of "Hamas" and the Palestinian Authority, should be abolished and responsibility transferred to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. It, in turn, should follow its usual humanitarian doctrine, according to which refugees are either repatriated or - if that is not possible - resettled in other countries, with the consent of the refugees themselves and their countries. But unlike the refugee camps of the Palestinian Refugee Agency, the camps of the High Commissioner do not exist forever, "the American expert said.
In this way, the Palestinians will receive the same humanitarian treatment as all other refugees after the end of World War II, which will benefit them, Bolton stressed. Therefore, Trump's comments may lead to the beginning of a debate on finding a permanent home for the Palestinians from Gaza, he added.
However, Saudi Arabia and many of its neighbors described Prime Minister Netanyahu's idea of resettling Palestinians on Saudi territory as "unacceptable" and "seditious", notes the French newspaper "Parisien".
Trump's proposal that the United States take ownership of Gaza and turn it into the Middle Eastern Riviera was startling, the publication writes. Like many other things the new US president proposes, it is unlikely to happen, which is hardly the show of force he wants, writes the American newspaper "New York Times".
Instead, it further legitimizes the idea that two million Palestinians in Gaza must leave a land they do not want to leave, and ignores the fact that neighboring Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan would be destabilized by complicity in ethnic cleansing, the publication points out. "What is more, he implicitly endorses a foreign policy view that deprives less powerful nations and peoples of the right to determine their own destiny," writes the "New York Times".
Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich immediately took advantage of this new reality, the newspaper notes. "We will now work to completely bury the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state," he said after Trump's remarks, quoted by the New York Times.
If Trump had cared about the plight of Gazans, he would not have destroyed the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is responsible for helping them rebuild, the newspaper said. The global freeze on foreign aid and the suspension of much of the agency's workforce already leaves it unable to support the fragile truce in Gaza with humanitarian aid, not to mention the more difficult tasks of clearing rubble, disposing of unexploded bombs and providing shelter to hundreds of thousands of civilians who have lost their homes, the American publication emphasized.