Influential Saudi Arabia leader Tells Trump to Pound Sand on Relocation of Palestinians from Gaza
Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright
In an opinion piece on February 3, 2025, influential Prince Turki Al Faisal, the former Saudi ambassador to Washington and London and director-general of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence agency gives President Trump a history lesson about the Palestinian struggle and the probable Saudi official response to Trump’s off-the-wall declaration that the U.S. will “own Gaza and turn it into a resort.”
In a slap in the face of Israel and the United States, Prince Turki stated that if Palestinians in Gaza are moved, “they should be allowed to return to their homes and to their orange and olive groves in Haifa, Jaffa and other towns and villages from which they fled or were forcibly driven out by the Israelis.”
In a prod at Trump for Trump’s massive deportation of immigrants, Prince Turki states that “The Palestinian people are not illegal immigrants to be deported to other lands. The lands are their lands and the houses that Israel destroyed are their homes, and they will rebuild them as they have done after previous Israeli onslaughts on them.”
Prince Turki Al Faisal also reminds Trump that most of the people of Gaza are refugees from the Israeli genocidal assault on them in the 1948 and 1967 wars. He demands that if these refugees are to be moved from Gaza, “they should be allowed to return to their homes and to their orange and olive groves in Haifa, Jaffa and other towns and villages from which they fled or were forcibly driven out by the Israelis.”
Here is Prince Turki Al Faisal’s entire letter to President Trump:
Prince Turki Al Faisal: Mr Trump, it’s time for America to recognise Palestine
February 03, 2025
On the occasion of Donald Trump’s recent call to relocate Palestinians from Gaza, Prince Turki Al Faisal writes him a letter in The National
Dear President Trump,
The Palestinian people are not illegal immigrants to be deported to other lands. The lands are their lands and the houses that Israel destroyed are their homes, and they will rebuild them as they have done after previous Israeli onslaughts on them.
Most of the people of Gaza are refugees, driven out of their homes in what is now Israel and the West Bank by the previous Israeli genocidal assault on them in the 1948 and 1967 wars. If they are to be moved from Gaza, they should be allowed to return to their homes and to their orange and olive groves in Haifa, Jaffa and other towns and villages from which they fled or were forcibly driven out by the Israelis.
Mr. President, many of the tens of thousands of immigrants who came to Palestine from Europe and other places after the Second World War stole Palestinian homes and land, terrorised the inhabitants and engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Alas, America and the UK, the victors of the war, stood by and even facilitated the murderous evictions of the Palestinians from their homes and lands.
America and the UK did not want to receive the victims of Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust, so they were content with sending them to Palestine. In the book Eight Days at Yalta, the author Diana Preston refers to a conversation between then US president Franklin Roosevelt and his Russian counterpart Joseph Stalin. Preston writes: “Conversation turned to the subject of Jewish homelands. Roosevelt said he was a Zionist… When Stalin asked Roosevelt what present he planned to make [Saudi king] Ibn Saud, he replied his only concession might be to give him six million Jews…”
Fortunately, when Mr. Roosevelt did meet Ibn Saud, the king disabused him of that offer and suggested that the Jews should be offered the best lands in Germany as compensation for the Holocaust. Alas, Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s successor, wholeheartedly supported Jewish immigration to Palestine and eventually became instrumental in the creation of Israel.
One hundred and forty-nine countries recognise the Palestinian state. Please make your country the 150th.
The violence and bloodshed we witness today are the result of that action and the previous British complicity with Zionist ambitions from 1917 until then.
Mr President, your declared intent to bring peace to Palestine is much lauded in our part of the world. I respectfully suggest that the way to do that is to give the Palestinians their inalienable right to self-determination and a state with its capital in East Jerusalem, as envisaged in UN General Assembly Resolutions 181 and 194 and Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the Arab Peace Initiative.
All the Arab and Islamic countries, as well as the Palestinian Authority, accept the terms of the Arab Peace Initiative to end hostilities and establish relations with Israel. One hundred and forty-nine countries recognise the Palestinian state. Please make your country the 150th. No peace in the Middle East will be realised without addressing this noble issue justly and fairly.
Be remembered as the peacemaker.
Turki Al Faisal
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. Department of State in March 2003 in opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
Pretty clear message to the delusional rants of the empire defenders.
This is amazing.