President Donald Trump said Saturday he wants Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations to accept more Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip, potentially moving out enough people to ‘just clean out’ the area destroyed in the Israel-Hamas war, which is now under a ceasefire.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had a conversation earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak Sunday with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt.
‘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.”
Trump said he applauded Jordan for accepting Palestinian refugees but that he told the king: ‘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. It’s a real mess.’
A drastic displacement like this would contradict Palestinian identity and deep connection to Gaza.
‘Palestinians in Gaza—like Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel—overwhelmingly trace their ancestry to cities and villages in the region that today comprises Israel and Palestine,’ former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, who is Palestinian, wrote on X. ‘The idea that they are some kind of spillover from other countries in the so-called Arab world—that they are just interchangeable with other ‘Arabs’—is a false but routinely employed rhetorical device to erase their history on the land.’
‘They are the descendants of Canaanites, Israelites, Phoenicians, and other ancient Levantine peoples,’ Amash, a libertarian, said. ‘Their ancestry overlaps with that of their Jewish neighbors, but they are converts to Christianity, Islam, and other religions. Any effort to force them out or to pressure them to leave under threat of force is simply ethnic cleansing.’
But Trump said the part of the world that encompasses Gaza, has ‘had many, many conflicts’ over centuries and that resettling ‘could be temporary or long term.’
‘Something has to happen,’ Trump 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.’
Senior Israeli officials said, according to Israel’s Channel 12, that ‘Trump’s statement about the migration of Gazans to Muslim countries is not a slip of the tongue but part of a much broader move than it seems, coordinated with Israel.’
On Monday, after he was inaugurated, Trump suggested that Gaza has ‘really got to be rebuilt in a different way.’
‘Gaza is interesting,’ he added. ‘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, but it’s very interesting.’
Trump also said Saturday that he ended former President Joe Biden’s hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that was in place during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, which has been under a ceasefire for a week.
‘We released them today,’ Trump said of the bombs. ‘They’ve been waiting for them for a long time.’ Trump said he lifted the ban on the bombs ‘Because they bought them.’
Biden had halted the delivery of the bombs in May in an effort to prevent Israel from launching an all-out assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
The 15-month-long war in Gaza started when Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, prompting military retaliation from Israeli forces. Nearly 100 hostages remain captive in Gaza.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.