Somalia and its breakaway region of Somaliland have not received any proposal from the US or Israel to resettle Palestinians from Gaza, their foreign ministers said yesterday, with Mogadishu saying it categorically rejected any such move.
The AP quoted US and Israeli officials as saying their governments had contacted officials from Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland to discuss using their territory for resettling Palestinians from the devastated Gaza Strip. Sudanese officials said they rejected the proposal by the US, and officials from Somalia and Somaliland said they were unaware of any contacts, AP reported.
Somalia’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Moalim Fiqi said his country would categorically reject “any proposal or initiative, from any party, that would undermine the Palestinian people’s right to live peacefully on their ancestral land”.
He told Reuters that Somalia’s government had not received any such proposal, adding that Mogadishu was against any plan that would involve the use of Somali territory for the resettlement of other populations. Abdirahman Dahir Adan, Somaliland’s foreign minister, told Reuters that “there are no talks with anyone regarding Palestinians”. A senior Sudanese government official told Reuters that Sudan had not received such a proposal and that it would be unacceptable.
Arab leaders adopted a $53 billion Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza that would avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave, in contrast to Trump’s vision of a “Middle East Riviera”.
Asked about the AP report, Michele Zaccheo, UN spokesperson in Geneva, said: “Any plan that could or would lead to the forced displacement of people or any type of ethnic cleansing is something that we would obviously be against, as it is against international law.”
Taher Al Nono, political adviser to the leadership of Hamas, said the proposal to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Africa was “silly” and had been rejected by the Palestinians and Arab leaders.
“The Palestinians will not leave their land,” he said.
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