TRIPOLI (Reuters) -The U.S. embassy in Libya denied on Sunday a report that the U.S. government was working on a plan to relocate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.
On Thurdsay, NBC News said the Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate as many as one million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya.
NBC News cited five people with knowledge of the matter, including two people with direct knowledge and a former U.S. official.
“The report of alleged plans to relocate Gazans to Libya is untrue,” the U.S. embassy said on the X platform.
The Tripoli-based interionationally-recognised Government of National Unity was not available for immediate comment.
Trump has previously said he would like the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and its Palestinian population resettled elsewhere.
Palestinians vehemently reject any plan involving them leaving Gaza, comparing such ideas to the 1948 “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” when hundreds of thousands were dispossessed of their homes in the war that led to the creation of Israel.
When Trump first floated his idea after taking the presidency, he said he wanted U.S. allies Egypt and Jordan to take in people from Gaza. Both states rejected the idea, which drew global condemnation, with Palestinians, Arab nations and the U.N. saying it would amount to ethnic cleansing.
In April, Trump said Palestinians could be moved “around to different countries, and you have plenty of countries that will do that”.
During a visit to Qatar this week, Trump reiterated his desire to take over the territory, saying he wanted to see it become a “freedom zone” and that there was nothing left to save.
Trump has previously said he wants to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
(Reporting by Ahmed Elumami, Tom Perry in Beirut, editing by Deepa Babington)
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