Ethnic cleansing feared as Trump asks Jordan, Egypt to take Gaza residents

Trump says relocation may be temporary or long-term as he also announces lifting of hold on 2,000-pound bombs for Israel.

Published On 26 Jan 202526 Jan 2025

United States President Donald Trump says he would like to “just clean out” Gaza, urging Egypt and Jordan to take in more Palestinians from the coastal enclave. Speaking with reporters on board Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he had a call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak with Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi later on Sunday.“I would like Egypt to take people,” Trump said. “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.'”

Trump said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and that he told the king, “I would love for you to take on more, ‘cause I am looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”

Israel’s genocide in Gaza displaced almost the entire 2.3 million people in Gaza, some of them multiple times. Trump said Gaza’s inhabitants could be moved “temporarily or could be long term”.

“It is literally a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” he said.

“So, I would rather get involved with some Arab nations and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) condemned the US president’s suggestion, calling it an encouragement of “war crimes”.

Describing Trump’s idea as “deplorable”, the group, which has fought a war with Israel alongside Hamas until last week’s ceasefire, said his “proposal falls within the framework of encouraging war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.

It also said Trump’s statement was “in line with the worst of the agenda of the extreme Zionist right and a continuation of the policy of denying the existence of the Palestinian people, their will and their rights” and called on Egypt and Jordan to reject his plan.

Abdullah Al-Arian, associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that the US president’s remarks “should be taken seriously in part because we have seen this specific demand being made for over the last year and a half”. He said the Israeli officials had indicated “very early on in the course of the war” to “ethnically cleanse” as much of the Palestinian territory as possible.

“That plan failed for multiple reasons, one of which is that Arab leaders who were approached at that point in time simply declined to take on an additional Palestinian refugee population, in part because it was politically unviable in Egypt in particular, which was mooted as a possible destination for a mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza,” he said.

Al-Arian said Palestinians themselves would not be interested in such a proposal by Trump. “They know all too well what it means to leave their home and what the status of Palestinian refugees has looked like for the past 70 years,” he said.

Meanwhile, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed Trump’s idea to relocate Gaza’s residents to Egypt and Jordan.

“The idea of helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea. After years of glorifying terrorism, they will be able to establish new and good lives in other places,” Smotrich said in a statement.

“Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security,” he said.

“I will, with God’s help, work with the prime minister and the cabinet to ensure there is an operational plan to implement this as soon as possible,” Smotrich said.

For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark memories of what they call the “Nakba” or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948

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

Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.

Sending 2,000-pound bombs

Israel’s 15-month war on the Palestinian enclave killed more than 47,000 people, though residents and activists say the actual toll could be much higher. The relentless bombing has also left much of the territory in ruins, with the United Nations estimating the reconstruction will take many years.

However, Trump also said he has ended his predecessor’s hold on sending 2,000-pound (907kg) bombs to Israel. “We released them today,” Trump said of the bombs. “They’ve been waiting for them for a long time.”

Asked why he lifted the ban on those bombs, Trump responded, “Because they bought them.”

Then-President Joe Biden had put a hold on the delivery of those bombs due to concerns over the effect they could have on the civilian population.

A 2,000-pound bomb has a destruction radius of 35 metres (115 feet), according to the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA).

The US has historically supplied substantial foreign aid to Israel; a total of $297bn (adjusted for inflation) between 1946 and 2023, $216bn of which was in military aid and $81bn in economic aid, according to data from the US Agency for International Aid (USAID).

Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of US aid since its founding.

A ceasefire in Gaza went into effect a week ago and has led to the release of some Israeli captives in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies