MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin: Removing 2 Million Palestinians from Gaza ‘Would Amount to Ethnic Cleansing’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
>> No.
>> Don’t be so self-deprecating.
>> Israel is stepping up its assault on Gaza city, urging residents to evacuate as its forces advance deeper and deeper into the area. On Friday, Israeli forces leveled a huge high rise tower in the city. The defense minister there said, quote, the gates of hell are opening in Gaza, an Israeli military spokesman said Israel now controls 40% of the city, and the operation would expand in the coming days. Meanwhile, there are reportedly alarming postwar plans for Gaza circulating within the White House. The Washington Post reports that the plan aims to, quote, turn Gaza into a trusteeship administered by the United States for at least 10 years while it is transformed into a gleaming tourism resort in high tech manufacturing and technology hub. The plan envisions temporary relocation of all of Gaza’s, all of Gaza’s more than 2 million population, either through what it calls voluntary departures to another country or into restricted secured zones inside the enclave. Joining us now, Ayman Mohyeldin, host of the weekend prime time on MSNBC. Ayman, I just want to start there on this kind of report of what the postwar report, this seems shocking. And, you know, when I was talking to people and you talked to a lot more than I do about this, the idea that this would happen feels to them like ethnic cleansing.
>> It is. I mean, it is.
>> Very it is.
>> A very troubling report. And no.
>> Matter how much you try to sugarcoat it and say, oh, we’re going to build a high tech.
>> Hub or like.
>> Beachfront property. You may. Recall. President Trump infamously posted this video showing him and Benjamin Netanyahu on the beaches of Gaza a couple of.
>> Months.
>> Ago, when people started hearing of talks about.
>> What.
>> They would do with the civilian population. There’s no two ways.
>> About it.
>> Removing the 2 million people, the 2 million Palestinians who have called Gaza Strip their home and moving them out, either by offering them incentives or bitcoins or whatever the whatever else is suggested in that report would amount to ethnic cleansing. And the reason for that simply is what history has shown us, previous attempts by Israel to force Palestinians out of their homes in 1947 48.
>> Never.
>> Allowed for Palestinians to return back to their homeland. And so as a result of that, Palestinians have been displaced for decades, multiple generations.
>> Of them.
>> So this is exactly what this amounts to. No matter how much President Trump and others try to present this as progress or