Residents in Gaza have warned that Donald Trump’s proposals to “clean out” the war-ravaged Strip are a dangerous and “frightening trick” which amounts to bringing an end to Palestine.
Masri Falah, a 36-year-old from northern Gaza who has been displaced to Khan Younis in the south, told The Independent the focus should be on rebuilding Gaza, not forcibly displacing its people.
Having already endured 15 months of unprecedented bombardment, Mr Falah warned that any such move to send Gaza’s population to Jordan and Egypt would not merely be temporary, but would see the Palestinians permanently shut out of their homeland.
“If this proposal happens, to temporarily evacuate the Gaza Strip, the people of Gaza will not be returned to the Strip again,” he said.
“I hope that they will set up camps to live in within the Gaza Strip until the rubble is quickly removed. And to bring in appropriate equipment to remove the rubble and rebuild.”
Human rights advocates warned that Mr Trump’s comments are “an alarming escalation in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people”, telling The Independent that if carried out would make him complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ibrahim Abu Serial, 46, who was displaced in Deir al-Balah, said Mr Trump’s words were part of attempts to destroy the idea of Palestinian citizenship, and the right for Palestinian refugees to return.
He pointed to orders by the Israeli government to shut down the United Nations Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA), which is now banned in Israel and has been accused of supporting terror groups.
“We love this land as trees love water. We have no intention of leaving,” he said.
“They have been trying for a long time to stop UNRWA, the right of return, and the rights of refugees. If I went abroad, there would be no life. Look at the lives of refugees in the Palestinian camps.”
Mr Trump raised the idea of mass movement while speaking to journalists on Air Force One, saying he had already spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah and intended to ask Egypt’s president Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi about the plan.
When asked if this was a temporary or long-term solution for Gaza, where Israel’s military assault has killed tens of thousands of people and laid waste to the territory, Trump said: “Could be either.
“You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” he said about the tiny enclave, where 90 percent of its 2 million-strong population are internally displaced.
“It’s literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, which has extensively investigated human rights abuses in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, said Mr Trump’s proposal suggests forcibly displacing Palestinians from Gaza “on an even larger scale than we’ve seen to date.”
“If this were to happen, it would amount to an alarming escalation in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people and exponentially increase their suffering,” he told The Independent. “The Trump administration should abandon this plan and avoid complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
In a post on X, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, said: “Ethnic cleansing is anything but an ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, no matter how one packages it. It is illegal, immoral, and irresponsible.”
Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority condemned the proposal. Jordan, which is already home to more than two million Palestinian refugees, rejected the idea, as did Egypt, which has warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to comment on Mr Trump’s proposal.
The comments were, however, welcomed by extreme right-wing members of Israel’s government. Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has repeatedly called for the return of Jewish settlers to Gaza, called it “an excellent plan” and said he would work to develop a plan to implement it.
Before and during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, some 700,000 Palestinians — a majority of the pre-war population — fled or were forced to flee from their homes in what became Israel, an event the Palestinians commemorate as the Nakba — Arabic for catastrophe.
The refugees and their descendants now number around 6 million, with large communities in Gaza, as well as the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Israel has refused to allow them to return.
Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel since the 1967 Middle East war, which saw Israel capture the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, but support the creation of a Palestinian state in those areas. They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population could make that impossible.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said his country’s rejection of the proposed transfer of Palestinians was “firm and unwavering.”
The temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians “risks expanding the conflict in the region and undermines prospects of peace and coexistence among its people,” Egypt’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
In Gaza, civilians told The Independent they feared that comments from Mr Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, would only speed up a long campaign in Israel to destroy the notion of Palestinian citizenship and statehood.
They were particularly concerned as the comments came after US president removed sanctions imposed by his predecessor on some Israeli settlers accused of involvement in violent attacks against Palestinians, and after he directed the US to release a supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Former president Joe Biden had imposed a hold due to concerns about their effects on Gaza’s civilian population.
Others, however, desperate after losing several members of their families and their homes to Israel’s bombardment, said they could no longer survive living in decimated Gaza, and so had no other choice than to try to leave.
Ghadeer Alhabash, 28, from Gaza City, said she had nothing left after 15 months of Israel’s bombardment and so said she was forced to support Mr Trump’s proposal.
“My brother is a prisoner, my brother’s children were martyred, my husband was martyred, many relatives were killed, there is no one in Gaza who did not lose someone from their family, our homes are gone, if we return to our home, there is nothing to return to,” she sadi.
“The truce is meaningless, after what happened to us, and we do not want anything else than a better life abroad, better than the life we live here, our life is not life.”
Duaa Abed Rabbo, 35, from the north displaced to the south, said she is desperate to move to Jordan as she has lost countless members of her family, her home has been destroyed, and she has no way of getting the care needed for her daughter who has Down’s Syndrome and suffers from rickets.
“We have had enough suffering and humiliation. Our lives will remain in a state of war until the Day of Judgment, just let us live a few years in security and peace,” she said.
