President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One as he travels from Las Vegas to Miami on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025. AP
The Israeli genocidal war that broke out in the territory in October 2023 is paused due to a fragile ceasefire, but much of Gaza’s population has been left largely homeless by an Israeli deadly attacks.
Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One that moving about a 1.5 million people away from Gaza might mean that "we just clean out that whole thing.”
Trump relayed what he told Jordan’s King Abdullah when the two held a call earlier Saturday: “I said to him, ‘I’d love for you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess.’”
The president said he would make a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during their conversation while Trump was at his Doral resort in Florida. Trump said he would “like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Egypt and Jordan, along with the Palestinians, have categorically opposed the proposal.
Their governments and other Arab states fear massive destabilization of their own countries and the region from any such influx of refugees.
Jordan already is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees. Egypt has warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.
Trump suggested that resettling most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million could be temporary or long term.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry stated on Sunday that Cairo categorically rejects any displacement of Palestinians from their land, be it "short term" or "long term".
In its statement, the Foreign Ministry reiterated Egypt's steadfast adherence to the principles and parameters of a political settlement for the Palestinian cause, emphasizing that it remains the central issue in the Middle East.
Jordan's foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that his country's opposition to what Trump floated was “firm and unwavering.”
Safadi said: “The solution to the Palestinian issue is in Palestine, and Jordan is for Jordanians, and Palestine is for Palestinians."
Some Israel officials had raised the idea early in the war.
The Palestinian presidency also condemned any plans to displace residents of Gaza, calling such suggestions a “red line” and warning against a repeat of the mass expulsions of 1948 and 1967.
Meantime, in the United States, even Trump loyalists tried to make sense of his words.
“I really don't know,'' said Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” about what Trump meant by the ”clean out" remark. Graham, who is close to Trump, said the suggestion was not feasible.
“The idea that all the Palestinians are going to leave and go somewhere else, I don’t see that to be overly practical,” said Graham, R-S.C. He said Trump should keep talking to Mideast leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and officials in the United Arab Emirates.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about. But go talk to MBS, go talk to UAE, go talk to Egypt,” Graham said. “What is their plan for the Palestinians? Do they want them all to leave?”
Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, also announced Saturday that he had directed the U.S. to release a supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Former President Joe Biden had imposed a hold due to concerns about their effects on Gaza's civilian population.
Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel occupied in the 1967 War.
They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population could make that impossible.
* This story was edited by Ahram Online.
Short link: