GAZA: US President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Jordan and Egypt should take more Palestinians from Gaza is raising concerns that they are being driven out of the coastal strip, with Arab states worried about the destabilising impact of any such exodus.

Both Hamas and Palestinian political leaders have reacted with fury and defiance to a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to “clean out” Gaza, which has been met with approval from the Israeli side.

Calling Gaza a “demolition site”, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory.

“You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza, whose population is about 2.4 million.

Tens of thousands waiting to re-enter besieged enclave as Israel closes entry gates

“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said, adding that moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be “temporarily or could be long term”.

“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people”, he said, adding that he would also talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.

For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of ‘Nakba’ — the mass persecution and displacement of Palestinians from their land for the creation of Israel.

Egypt had previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians into the Sinai desert, which Sisi said could jeopardise the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.

Jordan is already home to 2.3m registered Palestinian refugees. Jordan’s rejection of any displacement of Palestinians is “firm and unwavering,” Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on Sunday.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas condemned “any projects” to relocate the people of Gaza outside the territory. Also, Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, said Palestinians would “foil such projects” as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.

Palestinians, he said, “will not accept any offers or solutions, even if their apparent intentions are good under the banner of reconstruction, as proposed by US President Trump.”

Waiting to enter

Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians were blocked from returning to the north of the territory on Sunday at the Israeli military barrier of the Netzarim corridor.

On Sunday, cars and carts loaded with belongings lined up near the blocked Netzarim corridor that they would cross to enter the north.

Ismail al-Thawabtah, director general of the government media office in Gaza, also said there were tens of thousands waiting at the junction. He put the total number of Palestinians waiting to return to the north “between 615,000 and 650,000”.

Israel announced it would prevent Palestinians’ passage to the north until the release of Arbel Yehud, an Israeli prisoner who Netanyahu’s office said “was supposed to be released” on Saturday.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2025