DUBAI: Britain’s former prime minister, Boris Johnson, said on Wednesday that he did not believe the lives of the people of Gaza had “notably improved under the rule of Hamas” since 2005.
“I think that the problem in Gaza is that you cannot go on with a situation in which you have a Gaza ruled by a government that wants to exterminate Israel,” Johnson told a crowded auditorium during a World Governments Summit session that was conducted by Richard Quest, CNN’s correspondent and anchor.
When asked by Quest why he thought that he was invited to Trump’s inauguration ceremony, Johnson replied: “Well I think because… look, I am sympathetic to many of the things that I think Donald Trump is trying to do. And I think that the world is, on the whole, better when America is strong and providing a strong leadership, and I think that is certainly what Trump is capable of providing.”
“Is he providing it at the moment?” asked Quest as he interrupted Johnson.
“Well, you certainly couldn’t say he wasn’t delivering action and event, and there are plenty of things going on … whether I agree with absolutely everything that he’s doing is another matter.”
Quest then steered the conversation to the topic of Gaza.
“What’s happened and what’s been happening in Gaza is an absolute tragedy,” Johnson said. “It needs to end, and the suffering of the people of Gaza needs to end, and the hostages need to come back …” he said, maintaining that the conditions in which the hostages were being held were “horrific.”
He added: “It’s not for me to try to analyze what the president (Trump) is suggesting.”
Johnson mentioned that earlier he was giving a speech in Florida and “I looked at the beach at Mar-a-Lago, and thought that it must be a fantastic place if you want to resettle millions of people from the Middle East … it’s beautiful with lots and lots of space here, but it’s not going to happen because somebody else owns it.
“Gaza is in law owned and occupied by people who have the right to be there, so that is not going to happen,” he said.
When the CNN anchor suggested it was destabilizing to suggest that Gazans move out, Johnson responded: “Well, but what Hamas did frankly was destabilizing … and I think that the problem in Gaza is that you cannot go on with a situation in which you have Gaza ruled by a government that wants to exterminate Israel.”
He reiterated that it was not for him to try to analyze what Trump was saying, but he thought that the US president was inviting people to ask: “Well, look, this place mainly does have great potential and it does have wonderful location… What is it? What is this failure? And it is a failure of governance.”
The tragedy of Gaza in Johnson’s view was, “there are many tragedies,” but one of them was that “to put it mildly, it is not a model of sensible municipal government, is it?”
“I think it is reasonable to point that out, and to ask people to speculate, and to ask people in this part of the world to speculate about how it could be improved and how collectively working together, life for people in Gaza could be improved,” Johnson said.
The ex-PM said that it didn’t seem to him that since 2005 the lives of Gazans had “notably improved under the rule of Hamas.”
Of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, Johnson said: “To say that Ukraine might be Russian again, you might as well say that the US could return to the British empire … it is just not going to happen. I don’t think so anyway.
“I think so far what has happened with the new administration in Washington has been encouraging. There hasn’t been an instant capitulation to Putin, which I think would have been a disaster.”
Any kind of solution to the situation in Ukraine that involved Putin keeping some territory, freezing the conflict without giving the Ukrainians the security guarantees they needed, represented, “I’m afraid a success for Putin … I don’t think that Donald Trump is going to want that. I think actually he is being very clever, and he is thinking very hard about how to deliver the right result for the West, America and for himself.”
