In a survey of 501 Israeli adults, 68% said they supported U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan for relocating the population of the Gaza Strip, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Monday.
A fifth of respondents in the poll, which has a 4.4% margin of error, said they oppose the plan and another 12% said they weren’t sure.
Defense Minister Israel Katz decided on Monday to establish a directorate for the voluntary departure of Gaza residents, Channel 14 reported.
In a counter-proposal to Trump’s initiative, Egypt is developing a plan to rebuild Gaza without forcing Palestinians out of the Strip, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.
Egypt and Jordan, which Trump suggested would absorb Gazans, have condemned the plan to relocate the population. The Arab League, of which Egypt and Jordan are members, also opposed the plan publicly.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was in Saudi Arabia on Monday in a tour of the region, has said that the United States was up to hearing alternative proposals.
“If the Arab countries have a better plan, then that’s great,” Rubio said Thursday on the American radio program, “The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show.”
According to AP, Egyptian officials have been discussing an alternative plan with European diplomats, as well as with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. They are also talking about ways to fund the reconstruction of Gaza.
Earlier this month, Trump announced his relocation plans in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” Trump said. “We’ll own it ... We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal ... the Riviera of the Middle East.”
He later suggested that Gaza’s entire population “should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck.”
