US President Donald Trump has said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza.
Trump said he had made the request to Jordan’s King Abdullah and planned to ask Egypt’s president on Sunday, too.
Describing Gaza as a “demolition site”, Trump said: “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing”. He added that the move “could be temporary” or “could be long-term”.
Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority condemned the proposal. Jordan and Egypt have also rejected the idea.
A ceasefire is being observed in Gaza after a deal between Israel and Hamas to halt the war which began when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.
More than 47,200 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed in Israel’s offensive, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says.
Most of Gaza’s two million residents have been displaced in the past 15 months of the war, which has flattened much of Gaza’s infrastructure.
The United Nations has previously estimated that 60% of structures across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and it could take decades to rebuild
Trump made his comments while speaking to reporters on board the Air Force One.
“Almost everything is demolished and people are dying there.
“So I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where maybe they can live in peace for a change.”
Trump did not give further details of the proposal, and the subject was not referenced in the White House’s official read-out of the call.
It is not clear whether the US president has formally made the request to Egypt, but its foreign ministry has rejected any such effort “whether through settlement or annexation of land, or by evicting Palestinians from their land through displacement or encouraging the relocation or uprooting of Palestinians from their land, whether temporarily or long-term”.
Jordan’s foreign minister said the kingdom said it was “firm and unwavering” in its rejection of displacing Palestinians.
In Gaza itself, Bassem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the BBC: “Our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip endured death and destruction for 15 months… without leaving their land. Therefore, they will not accept any offers or solutions, even if they appear to be good intentions under the title of reconstruction, as announced by US President Trump’s proposals.
“Our people, just as they have thwarted all plans for displacement and an alternative homeland over the decades, will also thwart such projects,” he added.
In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas “expressed strong rejection and condemnation of any projects aimed at displacing our people from the Gaza Strip”.
Asked about Trump’s comments, Abu Yahya Rashid, a man displaced in the southern city of Khan Younis said:
“We are the ones who decide our fate and what we want. This land is ours and the property of our ancestors throughout history. We will not leave it except as corpses.”
Decades of US foreign policy has committed to the creation of a Palestinian state, with Gaza as a key part. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects this.
Donald Trump has a long history of seemingly speaking off the cuff and floating ideas that never end up taking fruition.
However, the idea of encouraging Gazans to relocate to neighbouring countries has long been pushed by hardline right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government.
The former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from the Jewish Power party said he commended Trump “for the initiative to transfer residents from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt”.
“One of our demands from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to promote voluntary emigration,” he wrote on X.
The current Israeli finance minister, the far-right settler Bezelal Smotrich, has also said Palestinians should emigrate to neighbouring countries to allow Jewish settlements to be re-established in Gaza.
Such comments outrage Palestinians and will dismay proponents of a “two-state solution” – the establishment of an independent Palestinian State alongside Israel.
There are fears amongst Palestinians that those around President Trump are pushing him in a more extreme direction when it comes to policy in the Middle East.
This month, Trump’s nominee to be the next US ambassador to Israel, the evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee, rejected the idea of there ever being a Palestinian state outright.
“The Palestinians had their chance in Gaza,” he said in a US television interview.
“And look what happened there.”
Gaza came under Israeli occupation in 1967. In 2005 Israel withdrew troops and settlers from the strip but it retains control of Gaza’s airspace, seafront and vehicle access.
Huckabee’s comments contradict six decades of US policy in the Middle East during which Washington has long pushed the concept of a “two-state solution”.
The US has previously said that it opposes any forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
More than two million Palestinian refugees, most of whom have been granted citizenship, live in Jordan, according to the UN.
They are descendants of some of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in the conflicts surrounding the formation of Israel in 1948.
Thousands of Palestinians have fled to Egypt since the war with Israel began, but they are not recognised there as refugees.
Some on Israel’s far-right want to return to Gaza and establish settlements there. Israel ordered a unilateral pull out in 2005, with 21 settlements dismantled and about 9,000 settlers evacuated by the army.
Trump’s comments came as displaced people were delayed from returning to their homes in northern Gaza after Israel accused Hamas of breaching the terms of a ceasefire deal.
“There is nothing there – there is no life, everything is demolished. But still to return to your land, to your home is a big joy,” one man anxiously waiting told the BBC.
In separate comments on Air Force One, Trump said he had ended former President Joe Biden’s hold on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
“They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.
But the war in Gaza led to renewed calls for the US to reduce or end arms shipments to Israel, because of the level of destruction caused by US weapons in the territory.
