Trump said that he recently told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that ‘we’ve got to be good to Gaza. Those people are suffering.’
Help bring aid trucks into Gaza: LifeFunder
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) -- President Donald Trump has uncharacteristically spoken out in defense of the “suffering” people of Gaza after having spent the last several months repeating many of the same talking points about the war-torn region as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Aboard Air Force One yesterday, Trump told reporters that he is “pushing” Netanyahu to allow for medical supplies and food to reach the area.
“I said [on the call with Netanyahu], ‘we’ve got to be good to Gaza. Those people are suffering’,” Trump said. “There’s a very big need for food and medicine.”
Israel had placed a near-total ban on aid to the region earlier this month, claiming that it is necessary to pressure terror group Hamas. Others have said the policy amounts to planned starvation and is a violation of international law.
Humanitarian Jason Jones of the Vulnerable Peoples Project took to social media to praise Trump for his remarks.
“Thank you [President Trump] for standing with the most vulnerable,” he remarked while using the hashtag #GazaGenocide.
Trump’s comments come three weeks after he welcomed Netanyahu to the White House.
During a press scrum in the Oval Office, Trump referred to Netanyahu as a “special” person while calling himself as “by far the best [U.S.] president that Israel” has ever had.
Trump also repeated his wildly unpopular plan for the U.S. to be “controlling and owning the Gaza Strip.”
While Trump has been criticized by many foreign policy experts for that plan, some believe he is using his “art of the deal” approach as a way to ensure Netanyahu does not seize control of the region and to bring the conflict to some sort of end.
Notably, Netanyahu told attendees at a Jewish News Syndicate conference in Jerusalem this weekend that Israel alone will be controlling the area.
“Hamas will not be there. We’re not going to put the Palestinian Authority there … Israel will … control the area militarily. We’re not going to succumb to any pressure not to do that,” he said.
Netanyahu’s remarks were echoed by Jonathan Conricus, a former spokesman for the Israeli military.
Conricus spoke to the The Daily Signal, which is run by the D.C.-based Heritage foundation, at the same conference Netanyahu appeared at.
“I think in [an] interim period, Israel will apply a military occupation of it and rule Gaza to make sure that Hamas is indeed defeated,” he said.
Conricus then accused Egypt of “enhancing the suffering” of the Palestinians for not allowing them to flee the war zone. He said nothing about the Israeli government’s destruction of the region in the first place, or its blockade on basic human necessities from reaching the people.
According to Fox News, aid trucks have not entered Gaza since March 2.
Help bring aid trucks into Gaza: LifeFunder
