Palestine, Arab states reject Trump’s Gaza takeover proposal
The Palestinian president has said he strongly rejects President Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to take over Gaza and permanently resettle the 2.1 million Palestinians living there.
Hamas, whose 15-month war with Israel has caused widespread devastation, said Trump’s plan would “put oil on the fire” in the region.
The idea was also rejected by regional powers including Jordan and Egypt, which the US president wants to take in many of the displaced Gazans.
Saudi Arabia said Palestinians would “not move” from their land and it would not normalise ties with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump’s proposal could “change history” and was “worth paying attention to”.
Trump’s proposal comes two weeks after the start of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, during which Hamas has released some Israeli hostages it is holding in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
More than 47,540 people have been killed and 111,600 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
President Trump’s first major remarks on Middle East policy shattered decades of US thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday night, alongside the visiting Israeli prime minister.
“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings.”
Trump said Palestinians living in Gaza would have to be relocated to achieve his vision of creating “the Riviera of the Middle East”, and that they would be housed in Jordan, Egypt and other countries.
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When asked whether the refugees would eventually be allowed to return, he said that “the world’s people” would live in Gaza, before adding “also Palestinians”.
Trump also brushed aside previous objections from Jordan and Egypt’s leaders to taking in refugees, insisting that they would eventually “open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done”.
Netanyahu said: “This is the kind of thinking that will reshape the Middle East and bring peace.”
A unnamed senior Israeli official was also quoted as saying that Trump’s ideas surpassed all his “expectations and dreams”.
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the proposal was “the real answer to 7 October” and pledged to “definitively bury… the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state”.
However, the Palestinian leadership condemned the plan in a statement issued on Wednesday.
“These calls represent a serious violation of international law,” President Abbas said, adding that “peace and stability will not be achieved in the region without the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
Abbas leads Hamas rivals Fatah and governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
He declared that Palestinians would not “give up their land, rights, and sacred sites” and that “the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the land of the State of Palestine, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem”.
The head of the Palestinian mission to the UK, Husam Zomlot, told the BBC: “It’s a call for ethnic cleansing, for the forced displacement and expulsion of a people from their native land. It is immoral, it is illegal, and it is dangerous.”
Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said in a statement that Trump was “aiming for the United States to occupy the Gaza Strip”.
It warned that his proposal was “aggressive to our people and cause, won’t serve stability in the region and will only put oil on the fire”.
Palestinians in Gaza also said the plan was completely out of the question.
“We have endured nearly a year and a half of bombings and destruction, yet we remain in Gaza,” one man told BBC Arabic.
“We would rather die in Gaza than leave it. We will stay here until we rebuild it. Trump can do as he pleases, but we firmly reject his decisions.”
