LONDON — Prime Minister Keir Starmer distanced the U.K. from U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
In his first major public break with the fledgling Trump administration, the British prime minister insisted that Palestinians should be allowed to return to their homes — and stressed British support for a wider settlement in the Middle East.
“They must be allowed home,” he said in the House of Commons Wednesday lunchtime. “They must be allowed to rebuild, and we should be with them in that rebuild on the way to a two-state solution.”
The center-left Starmer has been at pains to ally with Republican Trump on a host of issues since the U.S. president won November’s election, despite a host of potential flashpoints.
But Gaza remains a hot-button issue in his Labour party, and Trump is already facing a mounting global backlash to his post-conflict plan.
Trump used a White House press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Tuesday to vow that the U.S. would “take over the Gaza Strip” and own it “long-term” after Israel’s 15-month bombardment of the area, which followed the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel.
Trump argued that Egypt and Jordan — who have publicly pushed back at an earlier hint of such a plan — would resettle Palestinians from the “pure demolition site” left by Israel’s bombing campaign. Such a proposal would involve the displacement of 1.8 million people.
“We have an opportunity to do something phenomenal,” Trump said of Gaza’s future. “I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something so magnificent.”
But Starmer, who was responding to a question from opposition Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, stressed that the U.K. is focused on protecting the delicate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
“The most important issue on the cease-fire is, obviously that it’s sustained, and we see it through the phases,” he said. “And that means that the remaining hostages come out, and the aid that’s desperately needed gets into Gaza at speed and at the volumes that are needed.”
The prime minister said two of the most moving images in recent days had been the release of British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari by Hamas — and “the image of thousands of Palestinians walking, literally walking through the rubble, to try to find their homes and their communities in Gaza.”
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