‘I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change,’ Trump said.
President Donald Trump said on Jan. 25 that he wants Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab nations to accept more Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip, with the goal of moving out enough of the war-torn area’s population to “just clean [it] out” and create a virtual clean slate of the Palestinian territory.
Trump made the comments during a 20-minute question-and-answer conference with reporters on Air Force One Saturday. He said he lifted former President Joe Biden’s hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, which was intended to lower civilian casualties in the Israel–Hamas War, now paused during a fragile cease-fire deal.
Trump said he released the bombs that day, “They’ve been waiting for them for a long time.”
When asked why he lifted the ban, Trump said, “Because they bought” the bombs.
The president has backed Israel for much of his political career. Regarding his goals for Gaza, Trump described a call earlier in the day with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and said he would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi on Sunday.
“I’d like Egypt to take people,” Trump said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”
During his call with Abdullah, Trump said he complimented Jordan for taking in Palestinian refugees and told the king, “I’d love for you to take on more, cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”
The resettling or displacement of Gaza refugees would likely spur pushback from Palestinians, who hold a connection to the region. Trump said the area has experienced “many, many conflicts” for centuries and that resettling could be “temporary or long term.”
“Something has to happen,” the president said. “But it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there.”
“So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” he added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not issue an immediate response to Trump’s remarks.
After his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump said Gaza has “really got to be rebuilt in a different way.”
”Gaza is interesting. It’s a phenomenal location, on the sea. The best weather, you know, everything is good. It’s like, some beautiful things could be done with it,” he added.
The response from the Hamas terrorist group and its aligned groups was swift, with the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad calling Trump’s idea “deplorable.” The group told AFP that the plan encourages “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land.”
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, has fought alongside Hamas and other allied Palestinian groups throughout the Israel-Hamas war. It is the second-largest militant group in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The U.S. State Department designated it as a terrorist group in 1997.
Bassem Naim of Hamas’s political bureau told AFP that Palestinians would foil those plans, just as they have with other ideas “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades.”
He added that Gazans would 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.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, an opponent of the Gaza truce deal, called Trump’s idea of seeking relocation for Gazans a “great idea.”
“Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security,” he said.
Trump’s resumption of large bomb deliveries is a break from Biden, who stalled their delivery in May to limit an all-out assault on Rafah, the southern Gaza city. Israel took control of the city a month later after a majority of Rafah’s one million residents that had lived or taken shelter in the city had been removed.
At the time, Biden had also paused 1,700 500-pound bombs that were packaged in the same shipment, but delivered those weeks later.
Trump’s latest move comes amid his celebrations of the first phase of the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Fighting is paused, and Hamas released some of the hostages it took in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.
However, negotiations in the cease-fire’s second phase have not yet begun, which would result in all Hamas-held hostages being released.
The Israeli government has threatened to resume its war with Hamas—which began after the terrorist group massacred Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023—if the remaining hostages are not released.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.