UAE envoy to Washington: US Gaza approach 'difficult'

The United Arab Emirates’ Ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al-Otaiba, said today that the US approach to Gaza is “difficult”, Reuters reported.

“But at the end of the day, we’re all in a solution-seeking business, we just don’t know where it’s going to land yet,” he said during the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

Meanwhile, UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan told US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that peace efforts in the region should be on the basis of a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state news agency WAM reported.

It said the UAE, one of the few Arab countries that normalised relations with Israel, categorically rejected any attempt to displace the Palestinians and deny them “inalienable rights”.

Trump has said the US will take over Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of its Palestinian population and transform it to the “Riviera of the Middle East”. Palestinians would be moved to Egypt and Jordan, Trump said, where communities would be built for them and they would not be allowed to return to Gaza.

The plan has been met with widespread rejection in the Middle East, Europe and by human rights groups who have said this amounts to a war crime.

Israel, however, has welcomed the idea, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling it a “revolutionary vision for the future of Gaza”.

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