Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at plans made by Israel and the United States for Gaza, fiery protests in Bangladesh, and near-constant earthquakes in Greece.
Trump Presses His Plan
Israel ordered its army on Thursday to prepare to allow the “voluntary departure” of large numbers of Palestinians living in Gaza. According to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, the military is to facilitate land crossings as well as “special arrangements for exit by sea and air.”
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at plans made by Israel and the United States for Gaza, fiery protests in Bangladesh, and near-constant earthquakes in Greece.
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Trump Presses His Plan
Israel ordered its army on Thursday to prepare to allow the “voluntary departure” of large numbers of Palestinians living in Gaza. According to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, the military is to facilitate land crossings as well as “special arrangements for exit by sea and air.”
“The actual idea of allowing Gazans who want to leave to leave—I mean, what’s wrong with that?” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late Wednesday. “They can leave; they can then come back.”
The order is in line with U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent proposal to relocate Gaza’s entire population of 2.1 million people to other countries to allow for the war-torn territory’s reconstruction. Trump has framed the plan as a humanitarian necessity and an economic opportunity, arguing that redevelopment would transform Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” despite many Palestinians and Arab leaders denouncing the move.
According to his proposal, “The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday, specifying that no U.S. troops would be needed on the ground. Instead, he has placed the onus of accepting displaced Gazans on neighboring countries, such as Jordan and Egypt (but not Israel).
Katz, however, appears to have spread that responsibility to all nations that oppose Israel’s military operations against Hamas. “Countries such as Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have falsely accused Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow Gazans to enter their territory,” he wrote on X on Thursday.
Such suggestions have sparked a flurry of behind-the-scenes diplomacy to stop the joint Israel-U.S. proposal. Both Jordan and Egypt have refused to accept displaced Gaza residents, with Jordanian King Abdullah II rejecting any efforts to annex the territory and Cairo stating that the plan “constitutes a blatant and flagrant violation of international law, international humanitarian law, and infringes on the most basic rights of the Palestinian people.” Egyptian officials told Time magazine that such a plan could undermine the country’s peace treaty with Israel and harm the region’s stability.
Saudi Arabia also strongly rejected the proposal and vowed not to sign a normalization deal with Israel—a foreign-policy priority for the Trump administration—without the creation of a Palestinian state that includes Gaza.
Fierce global backlash has echoed similar outcry among legal experts and human rights activists. “Much of the destruction in Gaza reflects a calculated Israeli policy to make parts of the strip unlivable,” said Lama Fakih, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Implementing Trump’s proposal, which the nongovernmental organization has said would amount to ethnic cleansing, “would move the U.S. from being complicit in war crimes to direct perpetration of atrocities.”
Under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), forcible population transfers are a war crime and a crime against humanity. Because Palestine is a signatory of the ICC, the international court would have jurisdiction over crimes that occur in Gaza, even if those crimes are committed by non-ICC members, such as Israel and the United States.
Today’s Most Read
What We’re Following
Bulldozer protests. Thousands of demonstrators looted and set fire to the home of Bangladesh’s late founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, on Wednesday to disrupt a scheduled online address by Rahman’s daughter, exiled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The protesters reportedly used sticks, hammers, and even a crane and excavator to demolish the house, which is where Rahman declared Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971 and where he and most of his family were later assassinated.
“They can demolish a building, but not the history. History takes its revenge,” Hasina said in a speech urging citizens to defy the interim government, which she claims seized power unconstitutionally. Local media reported on Thursday that overnight attacks also targeted homes and businesses tied to supporters of Hasina’s Awami League.
Hasina fled to neighboring India last August after weeks of anti-government protests resulted in more than 1,000 people killed and the end of her 15-year reign.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus now leads the caretaker government. “Sheikh Hasina has insulted and humiliated those who sacrificed themselves in the July uprising,” Yunus’s office said after the protesters’ attack. “Sheikh Hasina has threatened to create instability in the country.”
Daily tremors. Greek authorities issued a state of emergency for the island of Santorini on Thursday after near-constant seismic activity this month peaked with a 5.2 magnitude earthquake late Wednesday. Around 11,000 people have already fled the island, and safety measures implemented include halting construction, closing schools, and emptying pools. Local officials have reported no major damage thus far.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis urged residents on Wednesday to “cooperate with the authorities,” as scientists worry that the tremors are warnings of a bigger earthquake and possible landslides to come. The region’s last large-scale quake occurred in 1956, measured at magnitude 7.5, and killed at least 53 people.
The state of emergency will be in effect until March 3.
Trump’s deportation schemes. Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar tried to appease parliamentarians’ concerns on Thursday after opposition parties expressed outrage over the alleged poor treatment of 104 deportees on a U.S. military flight from Texas to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar late Tuesday. Local media reported that all passengers except for children were handcuffed during the 40-hour flight and that bathroom access was limited.
Jaishankar denied that women were restrained, but he said that the U.S. deportation process allows for deportees to be restrained. He also said that New Delhi was working with Washington to prevent mistreatment. Such allegations are expected to cause a political headache for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visits Trump in Washington next week.
The Trump administration has prioritized cracking down on undocumented migration during its first few weeks in office. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that Guatemala will accept 40 percent more deportation flights from the United States, including those carrying both Guatemalan migrants and other nationalities. The Central American country is the second to agree to a new migration deal with the United States during Rubio’s weeklong trip to Latin America.
Also this week, Mexico deployed its first batch of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to appease Trump’s demands. Trump agreed on Monday to postpone 25 percent tariffs on Mexican imports for 30 days after Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum pledged to dispatch 10,000 troops to the border to tackle undocumented crossings and drug trafficking, among other concessions. A similar deal was made with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to prevent a larger North American trade war.
Odds and Ends
It turns out that sometimes, the most efficient way to get something done is to let nature take its course. Czech authorities had spent seven years preparing for a water restoration project in Brdy Landscape Park before the local beaver population took matters into their own paws, building dams right where construction was set to begin. “The beavers saved us 30 million Czech crowns” (or $1.2 million) in just two days, the head of the nature reserve administration said. Leave it to beavers, I guess.
The post Trump Doubles Down on Gaza Displacement Idea appeared first on Foreign Policy.
