The US and Israel have approached representatives of three East African governments to discuss the potential use of their territories for the relocation of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, as part of a post-war plan proposed by US President Donald Trump.
The contacts with Sudan, Somalia and the self-declared region of Somaliland, which is not recognized as a sovereign state, reflect the determination of the US and Israel to push forward with a plan that has been widely condemned and raises serious legal and moral concerns. Given that all three locations are poor and in some cases plagued by violence, the proposal also raises doubts about Trump’s declared goal of relocating Gazan Palestinians to a “beautiful area.”
According to Sudanese representatives, they have rejected the US proposal. Representatives of Somalia and Somaliland, as reported by AP, said they were not aware of such requests. The US Presidential Administration and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially did not respond to journalists’ requests for a statement.
The North African country was one of the four states of the Abraham Accords that agreed to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020.
As part of the accords, the US removed Sudan from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a step that granted the country access to international credit and global legitimacy. However, the relations with Israel never took off as Sudan was engulfed in a civil war between government forces and the paramilitary RSF group.
The idea of a mass relocation of Palestinians was once considered a fantasy of Israel’s ultranationalist fringe groups. However, since Trump presented the idea at a White House meeting last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has praised it as a “vision.