CAMPAIGNERS called today for worldwide unity against  “grotesque” plans by US President Donald Trump to take over the Gaza Strip and forcibly evict the Palestinian population.

During a press conference from the White House on Tuesday, alongside a smirking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump detailed a plan to build new settlements for Palestinians outside Gaza and for the US to take “ownership” in redeveloping the war-torn territory into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

President Trump said: “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, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs.”

But activists slammed the scheme which comes during the first phase of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The  coalition of organisations that have spearheaded massive demonstrations across Britain for the last 15 months have called for a massive march in London from Whitehall to the US embassy on February 15.

A joint statement from the coalition — the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), Palestinian Forum in Britain, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition, Muslim Association of Britain and CND — said the “grotesque” statements by President Trump “have exposed the longstanding Israeli plan for ethnic cleansing.

“For more than a year, Israel and its supporters have denied that the true aim of the genocidal assault on Gaza has been the destruction of the Palestinian population, and denial of all of their rights including the right to self determination.”

The statement said: “We need hundreds of thousands to join us on the streets of London on Saturday February 15 for a huge march from Whitehall to the US embassy to send a clear message to the British government and to Trump.”

PSC director Ben Jamal said: “This is the fundamental litmus test for Keir Starmer’s government. History will judge how it responds at this moment.”

Mr Jamal called on the Labour government to make it clear that it will oppose the plans and “end its complicit support for Israel’s violations of the rights of the Palestinian people.”

Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said Mr Netanyahu’s intentions “echo the ethnic cleansing of the 1948 Nakba, and why we must spend every day between now and February 15 mobilising and building for the national march.”

The Westminster reaction to Mr Trump’s plan was almost universally negative. 

Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn said: “Now would be a good time for our government to defend international law. If they won’t say it, we will: Palestinians aren’t going anywhere.”

And fellow independent MP Shockat Adam warned that “Gaza is not some piece of real estate that Mr Trump can simply buy and redevelop.

“It is the traditional home of millions of Palestinian people who have every right to live there. His comments suggesting the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians would be a crime against humanity. 

“The British government needs to condemn his comments in the strongest possible terms.”

Suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana asked: “This is ethnic cleansing, plain and simple. But will the British government condemn this?”

Mr Starmer responded by attempting to distance Britain from ethnic cleansing without actually criticising the US president.

In the Commons, the Prime Minister emphasised the need to sustain the Gaza ceasefire through all its phases. 

He also stressed that the Palestinians of Gaza “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,” a position clearly at odds with the new line from Washington.

A Downing Street spokesman said that government policy on both rebuilding Gaza with its Palestinian population and seeking a two-state solution was unchanged, but he swerved away from labelling President Trump’s plan a breach of international law.

Earlier Foreign Secretary David Lammy told a news conference during a trip to Kiev: “We’ve always been clear in our belief that we must see two states. We must see Palestinians live and prosper in their homelands in Gaza and the West Bank.” 

Politicians in Scotland also slammed Mr Trump’s scheme.

The Scottish First Minister John Swinney said: “There must be no ethnic cleansing. Only a proper two-state solution will bring lasting peace.”

His predecessor Humza Yousaf, whose parents-in-law were trapped in Gaza for a number of weeks in 2023 as the fighting flared, labelled Mr Trump’s plan “ethnic cleansing” and insisted that “Gaza belongs to the people of Gaza. Period.”

Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme today, former Labour minister Jim Murphy said: “When you have the hard right within the Israeli cabinet cheering, I think it is the wrong call.”

He added that people should rarely take the US president literally “because he often has no intention of doing [what he says].”

Communist Party of Britain international secretary Kevan Nelson said: “The Labour government has a stark choice. It can either recognise the state of Palestine without further delay or persist in seeking validation and be condemned by history.”

In Palestine, Hamas spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou slammed the “American racist stance” that he said “aligns” with the Israeli far right. 

In a separate statement Hamas also labelled Mr Trump’s plan “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region.”

Hussein al-Sheikh, the secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee, posted on X that the PLO “affirms its rejection of all calls for the displacement of the Palestinian people from their homeland. We were born here, we have lived here and we will remain here.”

Egypt and Jordan have already rejected the idea of relocating more than two million Palestinians from Gaza elsewhere in the region. 

Following Mr Trump’s remarks, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry stressed the need for rebuilding “without moving the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.”

Saudi Arabia, an important US ally, declared its support for an independent Palestinian state was a “firm, steadfast and unwavering position.”

There would be no normalisation of relations with Israel without movement towards a Palestinian state, it added.

In the US opposition politicians quickly rejected President Trump’s idea, with Democratic senator Chris Coons calling his comments “offensive and insane and dangerous and foolish.”

Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian member of the US Congress from Michigan, said: “Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. This president can only spew this fanatical bullshit because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing.

“It’s time for my two-state solution colleagues to speak up.”

US-based journalist Eugene Puryear said the US president’s scheme was “a continuation of President Biden’s genocidal policies. It’s a clear reflection of how, regardless of party, US political elites share the same goals as Mr Netanyahu and his ilk to erase the Palestinian people and steal their land to enact imperialist settler-colonial policies. 

He warned that if President Trump moved ahead with his plan“he will be met with widespread outrage and protest in the US.”