The ambassador of the United States in Israel, Mike Huckabee, assured this Saturday that Israel has no plans to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza, after Israeli ministers pointed to that possibility.
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“I can categorically tell you that the Israelis have no plan to displace people from Gaza against their will,” Huckabee said to the press during a visit to Turmus Ayya, a West Bank town where many Palestinian-Americans live.
His statements come after the Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, presented on Thursday a plan to evict Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and send them abroad.
A few weeks before the legislative elections on October 27, Ben Gvir proposed expelling 250,000 Palestinians from Gaza within a year. The rest of the approximately two million inhabitants of the territory would leave during the following six years.
“It is realistic,” said Ben Gvir, a member of the ruling coalition and heavily criticized abroad.
During his visit to Turmus Ayya, a scene in recent months of attacks by Israeli settlers, Huckabee spoke of “serious consequences” when referring to these violent acts, without providing further details.
The ambassador also appealed to the responsibility of the Israeli government to guarantee the security of the inhabitants of the West Bank.
“The people of these communities have the right to live with a level of security, and the government has the responsibility to ensure that this is so,” he said.
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Huckabee pointed out that the purpose of his visit was to listen to “the legitimate complaints” of the Palestinian-American community residing in Turmus Ayya.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. For years, violent acts by settlers against Palestinians have been recorded, generally with no or minimal legal consequences.
In recent months, there has been an increase in that violence by Israeli settlers, with attacks on Palestinian crops and livestock aimed at expelling them from their lands.
The U.S. ambassador stated that Israel is “interested” in acting to stop that violence and insisted that these acts are carried out by a small minority.
“It may be a few hundred responsible, but those hundreds are too many,” Huckabee said.
About three million Palestinians and half a million settlers live in the West Bank, the latter in settlements that are illegal under international law.
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