President in effect endorses ethnic cleansing of territory before hosting meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu
Donald Trump has said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza due to the devastation left by Israel’s war on Hamas, in effect endorsing ethnic cleansing of the territory over the opposition of Palestinians and neighbouring countries.
Speaking as he prepared to host Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on Tuesday, Trump repeated the suggestion that Gaza’s population should be relocated to Jordan and Egypt – something both countries have firmly rejected.
Trump claimed Palestinians would “love to leave Gaza”, telling reporters: “I would think that they would be thrilled.”
After 16 months of devastating war with Israel, Trump said Gaza was “a pure demolition site”.
“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative… If they had an alternative, they’d much rather not go back to Gaza and live in a beautiful alternative that’s safe,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure. I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza,” he said.
When asked where such places might be, he suggested they could be in Jordan, Egypt or “other places. You could have more than two.
“You’d have people living in a place that could be very beautiful, and safe and nice. Gaza’s been a disaster for decades.”
Asked about the reaction of Palestinian and other Arab leaders to his proposal, Trump said: “I don’t know how they could want to stay.”
Sitting alongside Netanyahu, Trump was questioned by reporters whether Palestinians would have the right to return to Gaza if they left while the rebuilding was happening. The president replied: “It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return. Why would they want to return?”
A senior Hamas official dismissed the suggestion as a “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region.”
Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement: “Our people in the Gaza Strip will not allow these plans to pass. What is required is an end to the occupation and aggression against our people, not their expulsion from their land.”
There was also criticism from Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the UN. He said: “Our homeland is our homeland, if part of it is destroyed, the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people selected the choice to return to it. And I think that leaders and people should respect he wishes of the Palestinian people.”
Trump confirmed he was withdrawing the US from the United Nations human rights council and prohibiting future funding for the main UN agency serving Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The US president also signed a memorandum reimposing his “maximum pressure” policy of sanctions on Iran including efforts to “drive its oil exports down to zero” in order to stop Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
As he signed the memo, Trump said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
The comments came ahead of a meeting with Netanyahu, who is making is first visit to Washington since the international criminal court issued a warrant for his arrest.
Netanyahu and Trump are expected to discuss the fragile hostages-for-ceasefire deal as Israel and Hamas are supposed to begin a second phase of the negotiations that could lead to a permanent truce and the return of dozens more Israelis held hostage by Hamas in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Trump’s meeting with Netanyahu will be his first with a foreign leader since his inauguration, a sign of respect (despite the two leaders having a troubled relationship in the past) that also reflects the urgency of a ceasefire that Trump told reporters on Monday he had “no guarantees” would hold.
Shortly before the summit began, Hamas said that the second round of ceasefire talks had begun as stipulated in the deal signed last month.
Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Netanyahu ahead of the summit. Witkoff is said to have been instrumental in pushing the Israeli leader to agree to the ceasefire last month, even as Netanyahu’s ultra-rightwing allies threatened to leave the ruling coalition for taking too soft a line on Hamas.
In the US administration, Trump’s advisers are split among openly pro-settler hardliners such as Mike Huckabee, defense hawks such as the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and more pragmatic dealmakers such as Witkoff who are seeking to keep the shaky ceasefire on track, said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group.
“It’s a really mixed set of influences and interests that are impacting Trump, and it all has to sort of sort itself out relatively quickly, because if this ceasefire falls apart, you know, this is really, really bad, and there’s no hope of getting back from that,” he said. “This really is an inflection point, and a lot hinges on how this set of meetings go and what direction Trump pushes it in.”