US ambassador to Israel says there is no plan to force Palestinians out of Gaza

TURMUS AYYA, West Bank, Sept 4 (Reuters) – U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Saturday said there was no plan to force Palestinians to leave Gaza after two Israeli ministers this week floated proposals for the mass removal of Palestinians from the coastal territory.

• “I can tell you categorically there is no plan of the Israelis to displace people out of Gaza against their will,” Huckabee told reporters in Turmus Ayya, a Palestinian town in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

• “There is an open-mindedness (that) if people wish to leave that they should have the right to leave. To incarcerate them in a place they don’t want to be should be an absolute, I think, just disgrace,” Huckabee said.

• “Nobody is suggesting that there will be forced displacement. The Israelis are not. The Americans are certainly not. I know of no one who supports that.”

• Defence Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday said there was “no real solution for Gaza in the end without this migration.”

• Far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Thursday outlined a seven-year plan for removing Gaza’s population through what he described as “voluntary emigration.”

• Israel is to hold a general election on October 27.

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Alexander CornwellEditing by Tomasz Janowski)