In a Feb. 5 interview with CNN’s international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former head of Saudi intelligence, and former ambassador to the United States and Britain, minced no words in describing Donald Trump’s Feb. 4 proposal, made alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to remove the entire Palestinian population out of Gaza, as “not digestible.” It’s a fantasy, he said, “to think that ethnic cleansing can be condoned by a world community that stays on its behind and does not respond to that.” The problem in Palestine isn’t the Palestinians, he said. It’s the Israeli occupation, which is understood by everyone.
Hence, “you have UN resolutions which call for a quid pro quo, [which] call for land for peace” which has been the case since 1967—"until Trump.” Prince Turki emphasized that the Arab Peace Proposal is based on these concepts. “Everything that Israel wanted—trade, normalization in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state. This was always the policy of the United States,” he said. The Prince added he was glad that he was no longer in government, because if he were, there’s no way he could explain Trump’s policy of “mad ethnic cleansing and support for the Israeli position” which will only lead to “more conflict and bloodshed.”
