Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Sunday that “No power can force the people of Gaza out of their eternal and everlasting homeland that they have inhabited for thousands of years,” Anadolu Agency (AA) reported.
“Palestine, including Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, belongs to the Palestinians,” Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.
Erdogan’s comments came in response to US President Donald Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks at the joint press conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 5 at the White House when he said the US will “take over the Gaza Strip” and “own it.”
“Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing it, and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent,” Trump asserted.
In stark contrast to his assertion, human rights experts have condemned such notions as unlawful ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.
“The US administration’s “proposals” on Gaza, made under pressure from the Zionist regime, are not worth talking about, Erdogan told AA. “These efforts are totally futile and serve no purpose,” he said.