Donald Trump advocated for resettling Palestinians outside of Gaza on Saturday, breaking with decades of U.S. policy advocating for a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Trump said on Saturday that he spoke with the king of Jordan, floating a plan for Jordan and Egypt to take in refugees from the Gaza Strip.
"You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. "Something has to happen, 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."
Trump said that relocated Palestinians could live "in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change."
Hamas leadership rejected the notion that Palestinians living in Gaza should be resettled.
"The Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip have endured death and destruction over 15 months in one of humanity’s greatest crimes of the 21st century, simply to stay on their land and homeland," Hamas' Basem Naim told the New York Times. "Therefore, they will not accept any proposals or solutions, even if seemingly well-intentioned under the guise of reconstruction, as proposed by U.S. President Trump."
More than 2 million Palestinian refugees already live in Jordan. The Jordanian state news agency admitted that King Abdullah II spoke with Trump earlier this week but did not mention Trump's plans.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the far-right Religious Zionism party, lauded Trump's resettlement idea.
"After 76 years in which most of the Gaza population was forcibly held in difficult conditions in order to preserve the ambition to destroy the State of Israel, the idea of helping them find other places to start a new good life is a great idea," said Smotrich.
Shares