“They would love to leave Gaza. I would think that they would be thrilled. I don’t know how they could want to stay. It’s a demolition site,” Trump said.
“The Gaza thing has never worked. If we could find the right piece of land, pieces of land, and build them some really nice places…I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza,” Trump added, ahead of a key meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
Egypt and Jordan, as well as other Arab nations, have rejected calls by Trump to relocate the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians during the post-war efforts to rebuild the devastated strip.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, also called the Arab nations to accept the proposal and said it was “preposterous” to believe that Gaza could be made habitable for Palestinians within five years. “When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” he said to defend Trump.
Hard-line right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government have supported the call to move displaced Palestinians out of Gaza despite pushback from Arab nations. Suadi Arabia, the biggest Arab power, said it would agree to the proposal only if the war ends, leading to a credible proposal to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.
‘Recipe for chaos’
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, told AFP that Trump’s remarks were a “recipe for creating chaos” in the Middle East.
“We consider it a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region. Our people in the Gaza Strip will not allow these plans to pass. What is required is an end to the occupation and aggression against our people, not their expulsion from their land,” Zuhri said.
Palestinians returning to their devastated homes in Gaza also condemned Trump’s remarks.
“Trump thinks Gaza is a pile of garbage — absolutely not,” said Hatem Azzam, a resident of Rafah city. Calling the US president “delusional”, he said that Trump “wants to force Egypt and Jordan to take in migrants, as if they were his personal farm.”
Ihab Ahmed, another Rafah resident, deplored that Trump and Netanyahu “still don’t understand the Palestinian people” and their attachment to the land.
“We will remain on this land no matter what. Even if we have to live in tents and on the streets, we will stay rooted in this land,” the 30-year-old said.
(With AP, AFP inputs)
