Middle East: Donald Trump says ‘clean out’ Gaza, urges Arab countries to take more refugees

President Donald Trump said he wants Jordan and Egypt to take in more Palestinian refugees as part of a plan to “clean out” Gaza, a controversial proposal previously advocated by voices on Israel’s far right.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Mr Trump said he spoke with King Abdullah II of Jordan - whose country has historically taken in millions of Palestinian refugees - about the idea, which Abdullah and other Arab leaders have previously rejected.

“I said to him, I’d love you to take on more, because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess,” Mr Trump said. “I’d like him to take people. I’d like Egypt to take people.”

“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’,” he said.

“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,” he added. When asked, he said this solution could be temporary “or it could be long term.”

It is not clear if Mr Trump’s comments signal a change in US policy. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Sunday. The official readouts of the call from Jordan’s royal palace and the White House did not mention the suggestion of relocating Palestinians.

Human rights groups and the Biden administration have opposed a forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s Arab neighbours also oppose it and have said they fear that Israel intends to force Palestinians out in order to weaken their case for independent Palestinian statehood.

The idea has support among ultranationalists in Israel, who seek to establish settlements in the enclave. Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said in 2023 that “the voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world” was “the right humanitarian solution for the residents of Gaza and the entire region.”

Itamar Ben Gvir, another far-right politician who recently resigned from Israel’s government over its ceasefire agreement with Hamas, previously said Palestinians should be encouraged to “voluntarily migrate.”

Some Western leaders have also endorsed the idea, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Hamas, in a statement issued Sunday, accused the Trump administration of falling in line with Israeli plans and urged Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries “to emphasize their firm stances in rejecting any proposal of displacement or deportation” of Palestinians.

Originally proposed by Israeli strategists, the idea of relocating Gazans - particularly to the Sinai Peninsula, which is controlled by Egypt - has been the subject of discussion and controversy for years.

Mahmoud Abbas, who leads the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, has claimed on several occasions since 2014 that Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi was secretly willing to offer barren land in Sinai adjacent to the Gaza Strip to create a Palestinian state - something that Egypt has denied.

But any proposal to absorb Gazans is likely to be fiercely resisted by Egypt in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which triggered a devastating Israeli counterattack that has forced nearly 2 million Gazans from their homes and left much of the Gaza Strip in ruins.

Weeks after the war began, former Israeli officials and allies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including former deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon, publicly floated the idea of temporarily relocating Gazans to tent cities in Egypt - a proposal that was criticized as being akin to ethnic cleansing of the Strip.

A planning document written days after the Hamas attack by Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence, which was leaked and published by the Israeli website Local Call, also promoted the option of evacuating Gazan civilians to Sinai.

The proposal was publicly rejected by Abbas and Sisi, who has kept Egypt’s border with Gaza shut. Sisi said in an October 2023 speech that Palestinian refugees must not be allowed to settle in the Sinai and turn it into a “launchpad for operations against Israel” that would invite Israeli reprisals on Egyptian territory.

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian Canadian lawyer who has served as an adviser to Palestinian negotiating teams, said Sisi will not want to be seen as giving “exactly what Israel wants: It wants Palestinian land, just not the Palestinians on it.”

“There’s nothing new in all of this,” Ms Buttu said.

“To just erase Gaza and build it with something new is to treat [Palestinians] as something replaceable, and the harm that Israel has done as somehow erasable.”

The idea is particularly sensitive for Palestinians because of the recent memory of displacement, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Chatham House think tank. An estimated 750,000 Palestinians fled in the war of 1948 that led to the creation of the Jewish state - an event known as the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe” in Arabic. Another conflict in 1967 displaced hundreds of thousands more.

Many Palestinians fled these conflicts to nearby Arab countries, and today, there are an estimated 438,000 U.N.-registered Palestinian refugees in Syria, 493,000 in Lebanon and about 2.4 million in Jordan, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, UNRWA.

Thousands more Palestinians have fled since the start of the war in 2023: Palestinian authorities told The Washington Post last June that about 115,000 Gazans had crossed into Egypt since the previous October and were mostly living in limbo, with no legal status and nowhere else to go.

The question of large-scale displacement of Palestinians to neighbouring countries is a “fundamental red line” for Arab countries, particularly Jordan and Egypt, said Ms Vakil.

Mr Trump’s suggestion “really challenges and questions whether the US can be a broker and supporter of Palestinian statehood,” she said.

But in some Israeli strategic circles, Trump’s comment was met with approval. Amir Avivi, a former senior Israeli military officer who has long argued for encouraging Gazans to settle in Sinai, said Gazans were being “held hostage” by Egypt.

“We were pushing this idea years ago, and now it seems to have caught up,” he said, referring to Mr Trump vocalizing the resettlement proposal.

“Gaza is ruined and ruled by a very harsh terror organization and many Gazans want to emigrate, so calling for Egypt to open the border is the most basic human thing.”

In their call Saturday, Mr Trump said, he complimented the Jordanian king for hosting large numbers of Palestinian refugees in “a very humane way.” But he said the situation in Gaza was untenable.

“Something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now,” he said.

Mr Trump has broadly called for an end to the war in Gaza but has not been explicit about a path to achieve it.

Privately, he has offered support for Mr Netanyahu and his country’s offensives against Hamas and Hezbollah - telling the prime minister in a call last October to “do what you have to do,” as The Post reported at the time.

On Saturday, Mr Trump said he overturned former president Joe Biden’s pause on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, which was announced last May as part of an effort to reduce the civilian toll from Israel’s military operations.

When asked why he released the bomb shipments to Israel, Mr Trump said: “Because they bought them.”

Gerry Shih and Niha Masih contributed to this report.

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