GAZA STRIP: US President Donald Trump has floated a plan to “just clean out” Gaza, and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory, as a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas aimed at permanently ending the war enters its second week on Sunday (Jan 26).
The truce deal that came into effect on Jan 19 saw four Israeli hostages and around 200 Palestinian prisoners released to joyful scenes on Saturday, in the second such exchange so far.
But after 15 months of war, Trump called Gaza a “demolition site” and said 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 al-Sisi 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 Sisi said could jeopardise 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, adding that “something has to happen”.
“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 said, adding that moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be “temporarily or could be long term”.
The vast majority of Gaza’s people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the Gaza war that began after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on Oct 7, 2023.
