Saturday March 15, 2025
Somalia and its breakaway region of Somaliland have not received any
proposal from the United States or Israel to resettle Palestinians from
Gaza, their foreign ministers said on Friday, with Mogadishu saying it
categorically rejected any such move.
The Associated Press quoted
U.S. and Israeli officials as saying their governments had contacted
officials from Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland to discuss using their
territory for resettling Palestinians from the devastated Gaza Strip.
Sudanese
officials said they rejected the proposal by the United States, and
officials from Somalia and Somaliland said they were unaware of any
contacts, AP reported.Somalia's Foreign Minister Ahmed Moalim
Fiqi said his country would categorically reject "any proposal or
initiative, from any party, that would undermine the Palestinian
people’s right to live peacefully on their ancestral land".
He
told Reuters that Somalia's government had not received any such
proposal, adding that Mogadishu was against any plan that would involve
the use of Somali territory for the resettlement of other populations.
Abdirahman Dahir Adan, Somaliland's foreign minister, told Reuters that "there are no talks with anyone regarding Palestinians".
Unlike
Somalia, which has been battling an Islamist insurgency for more than
17 years, Somaliland has mostly been at peace since declaring
independence from the Mogadishu government in 1991.
But Somaliland
is not recognised by any country and its government has expressed hope
that U.S. President Donald Trump will be favourable to its cause.
Somalia
rejects any claim by Somaliland to be recognised as an independent
state and says its sovereignty and territorial integrity are inviolable.
The White House and the U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.
RECONSTRUCTION PLANS
The
foreign ministry of Sudan, a country dealing with a devastating civil
war, also did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
A
senior Sudanese government official told Reuters that Sudan had not
received such a proposal and that it would be unacceptable.
Arab
leaders adopted a $53 billion Egyptian reconstruction plan for Gaza that
would avoid displacing Palestinians from the enclave, in contrast to
Trump's vision of a "Middle East Riviera".
Trump has proposed a
U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip to reconstruct the enclave, wrecked by
fighting since October 2023, after earlier suggesting that Palestinians
should be permanently displaced.
Trump's plan reinforced
long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their
homes, and was widely rejected internationally.
Asked about the AP
report, Michele Zaccheo, U.N. spokesperson in Geneva, said: "Any plan
that could or would lead to the forced displacement of people or any
type of ethnic cleansing is something that we would obviously be
against, as it is against international law."
Taher Al-Nono,
political adviser to the leadership of the Palestinian militant group
Hamas, told Reuters the proposal to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in
Africa was "silly" and had been rejected by the Palestinians and Arab
leaders.
"The Palestinians will not leave their land," he said.
Israeli
ministers say they want to examine ways of facilitating the voluntary
departure of Palestinians from Gaza but are not considering forcible
expulsions.
Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan in Bengaluru, Khalid
Abdelaziz in Dubai, Abdi Sheikh in Mogadishu, Nidal Al Mughrabi in
Cairo; Editing by Kim Coghill, Michael Perry, Ammu Kannampilly, Timothy
Heritage and Alex Richardson