Trump’s idea to ‘clean out’ Gaza slammed by Palestinians

Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have condemned a proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump to "clean out" Gaza, as a fragile truce aimed at ending the war entered its second week.

There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

After 15 months of war, Trump called Gaza a “demolition site” and said that he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory.

“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that he expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Sunday.

Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants.

For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation 75 years ago.

Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which el-Sissi said could jeopardize the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.

Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.

“You’re talking about probably a million and half people and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza, whose population is about 2.4 million.

“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 continued, adding that moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be “temporarily or could be long term.”

Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects” as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades.”

Gazans, he said, “will not accept any offers or solutions, even if their apparent intentions are good under the banner of reconstruction, as proposed by U.S. President Trump.”

Islamic Jihad, which fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable” and said that it encourages “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land.”

The vast majority of Gaza’s people have been displaced, often multiple times, by Israel’s genocidal Gaza war, triggered by the Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The United Nations says close to 70% of the territory’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.

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