On Saturday, US President Donald Trump floated a plan to “just clean out” Gaza, stating that he wanted Egypt and Jordan to remove Palestinians from the territory in order to promote Middle East peace.
Trump said he had discussed the situation with King Abdullah II of Jordan and that he will speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday, calling Gaza a “demolition site” following the Israel-Hamas war.
“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing. You know, over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts on that site. And I don’t know, something has to happen.”
The conflict that started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked southern Israel, has resulted in the displacement of the great majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents, frequently on several occasions.
According to Trump, the relocation of Gaza’s residents may be “temporary or could be long term.”
In addition, “It’s a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished, and people are dying there.”
“So I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
Trump has taken credit for the shaky truce and hostage-release agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was reached on the final day of former US President Joe Biden’s administration. The agreement is now in its second week.
Although the Trump administration has not yet disclosed the specifics of its Middle East strategy, it has pledged “unwavering support” for Israel.
On Saturday, Trump affirmed that he had directed the Pentagon to unleash a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs for Israel, which Biden had prevented.
“We released them. We released them today,” Trump said. “They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time.”
The United Nations predicts it will take several years to rebuild the Palestinian territory after Israel’s retaliatory offensive left much of it in ruins and destroyed infrastructure.
During his presidential campaign in October, former real estate mogul Trump claimed that if Gaza was “rebuilt the right way,” it could be “better than Monaco.”
In February, Jared Kushner, a former White House official and Trump’s son-in-law, proposed that Israel clear Gaza of inhabitants in order to maximize the potential of its “waterfront property.”
Any attempt to relocate Palestinians from Gaza would bring up painful memories of what the Arab world refers to as the “Nakba,” or calamity, which was the mass exodus of Palestinians that occurred when Israel was founded 75 years ago.
Israel has denied that it intends to evict Gazans.However, a few far-right Israeli officials have openly endorsed the concept of a mass exodus of Gazans from the Palestinian area.