Starmer Responds To Trump's Gaza Plan: Palestinians 'Must Be Allowed Home'
London, UK. 5th February, 2025.
3 min read
Palestinians “must be allowed home”, the Prime Minister has said, following President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Gazans should be moved to a new location
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday Keir Starmer responded to concerns raised by the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, about Trump “forcibly displacing 1.8m people from Gaza”.
Speaking at a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the White House on Tuesday evening, Trump had said that the United States would “take over Gaza”.
“I mean they’re [Gazans] there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now,” Trump said, causing international backlash.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is currently underway, with a series of hostage exchanges taking place.
Responding to Davey, Starmer said: “They must be allowed home, they must be allowed to rebuild and we should be with them in that rebuild on the way to a two state solution.”
He said the image of Palestinians “walking through the rubble to try and find their homes and their communities in Gaza” had been stuck in his mind over the last few weeks.
Trump said on Tuesday: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.
“If it’s necessary, we’ll do that, we’re going to take over that piece, we’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of.”
The Reform MP for Boston and Skegness Richard Tice raised concerns on Wednesday that British aid was being "stolen by Hamas" and asked if the Prime Minister agreed that "we should stop funding Hamas, follow the example of other nations and divert our aid to other more trustworthy agencies".
Starmer answered: "To be absolutely clear - and [Tice] knows this - we're not funding Hamas, we never will, we condemn Hamas and everybody in this house should condemn Hamas."
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, the leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch claimed that “when Labour negotiates we all lose”, drawing on reports by The Times that the government had offered £18bn over a renegotiated deal regarding the Chagos Islands.
Badenoch called the act "an immoral surrender".
But Starmer hit back, telling the Speaker that the United Kingdom had to negotiate over the Chagos Islands due to “the legal certainty” of the base being “thrown into doubt”.
"This is a military base that is vital to our national security. A number of years ago the legal certainty of that base was thrown into doubt. And let me be clear and I'll pick my words carefully, without legal certainty the base cannot operate in practical terms as it should," Starmer said.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
