(Reuters) -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)
