Erdogan rejects US proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza

Mr Erdogan has called for Israel to pay for the damage it caused. Picture: AP

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has again rejected a US proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza.

Mr Erdogan also said Israel should pay for the damage it caused to the territory, and for reconstruction to begin.

During a visit to Malaysia on Monday, the Turkish leader said: “We do not consider the proposal to exile the Palestinians from the lands they have lived in for thousands of years as something to be taken seriously.

Mr Erdogan called for reconstruction to begin (AP)

“No-one has the power to force the Palestinian people to experience a second Nakba,” he added, referring to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Mr Erdogan, who is on a four-day tour of Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan, highlighted the severe destruction in Gaza.

He said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government should look for funds to “compensate” for what he said was damage amounting to 100 billion dollars (£80.6 billion) “instead of looking for a place for the people of Gaza”.

Meanwhile, Israeli police raided a long-established Palestinian-owned bookstore in east Jerusalem, detaining the owners and confiscating books about the decades-long conflict. The police said the books incited violence.

The Educational Bookshop, established more than 40 years ago, is a hub of intellectual life in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed to its capital in a move not recognised internationally.

The Educational Bookshop in east Jerusalem was raided by Israeli police (AP)

Most of the city’s Palestinian population lives in east Jerusalem, and the Palestinians want it to be the capital of their future state.

The three-storey bookshop has a large selection of books, mainly in Arabic and English, about the conflict and the wider Middle East, including many by Israeli and Jewish authors. It hosts cultural events and is especially popular among researchers, journalists and foreign diplomats.

The owners, Ahmed and Mahmoud Muna, were detained, and police confiscated hundreds of titles related to the conflict before ordering the store’s closure, according to May Muna, Mahmoud’s wife.

She said the soldiers picked out books with Palestinian titles or flags, “without knowing what any of them meant”.

She said they used Google Translate on some the Arabic titles to see what they meant before carting them away in plastic bags.

Police raided another Palestinian-owned bookstore in the Old City in east Jerusalem last week.

In a statement, the police said the two owners were arrested on suspicion of “selling books containing incitement and support for terrorism”.

As an example, the police referred to an English-language children’s colouring book entitled From the River To The Sea, a reference to the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that today includes Israel, the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians and hard-line Israelis each view the entire area as their national homeland. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is opposed to Palestinian statehood, has said Israel must maintain indefinite control over all the territory west of the Jordan.