Trump’s aides tried to walk back his Gaza takeover plan
Middle East leaders and key U.S. partners around the world quickly opposed President Trump’s proposal to force Palestinians out of Gaza and take it over. Amid the global alarm, top administration officials sought yesterday to soften elements of Trump’s plan.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that Trump was proposing only to clear out and rebuild Gaza and not to take it over. Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East, told Republican senators during a closed-door meeting that Trump “doesn’t want to put any U.S. troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any U.S. Dollars at all” on Gaza, according to a senator.
The Gaza proposal upended decades of international diplomacy and created a backlash in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia expressed its “unequivocal rejection,” Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said aid to Gaza would have to begin “without the Palestinians leaving,” and the king of Jordan warned against any attempt at displacement. Palestinians in Gaza expressed a mixture of condemnation and confusion.
A U.N. spokesman said that “any forced displacement of people is tantamount to ethnic cleansing.” Experts said a U.S. takeover of Gaza would be a breach of international law.
Thousands died in Goma as rebels took the city
The city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo is facing “days of mass burials,” an official from the International Committee of the Red Cross said. Nearly 3,000 people were killed over the last week in fighting between a rebel group and Congolese armed forces.
“That figure will likely go up,” Vivian van de Perre, the deputy head of the U.N. peacekeeping force, told my colleague, Elian Peltier, who is on the ground.
Throughout the week, families and humanitarian workers have raced to bury the dead, whose bodies have been stored in overflowing morgues across the city of two million people. Mechanical diggers have spent days preparing long trenches for burials.
Context: M23, a rebel group that the U.N. has said is funded by Rwanda, began its advance on Goma on Jan. 26 and fully captured the city in four days. Though most of the fighting has stopped, the city’s capture has raised fears of a broader war between Congo, Rwanda and their respective allies.
Merger talks between Nissan and Honda stalled
Negotiations between Nissan Motor and Honda Motor have hit a standstill, less than two months after the announcement of a merger deal that would have created one of the world’s largest auto groups. Nissan rejected a plan by Honda that would have given Honda a bigger say in the final structure of the company and have made Nissan its subsidiary, according to two people familiar with the talks.
Context: Honda executives entered negotiations already wary about Nissan’s troubled financial state. But the two automakers are struggling with the transition toward electric and software-laden vehicles.
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