President Donald Trump says Palestinians who would be relocated from the Gaza Strip under his plan to rebuild the war-torn territory would not have the right to return there and would instead have to remain in what he called “much better housing” in other countries in the region.
In an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier on Sunday, Trump said Gaza’s 2.1 million residents would have to remain displaced because it would be “years” before the territory could be rebuilt to the point where anyone could live there.
“I’m talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it’ll be years before you could ever—it’s not habitable,” he said.
Pressed by Baier on whether Palestinians could have the right to go back to Gaza after the rebuilding he envisions has been completed, Trump replied: “No, they wouldn’t.”
Trump unveiled his proposal for American “ownership” of Gaza during a press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week despite having had little in the way of consultations on it with members of Congress or representatives of other countries in the Middle East that would have to absorb the millions of refugees it would create.
The president is expected to bring up the plan when he meets with King Abdullah of Jordan at the White House on Tuesday.
Both the Jordanian and Egyptian governments have thus far flatly rejected the idea of taking in more Palestinian refugees, and Netanyahu himself has not gone so far as to rule out a right of return for Palestinians displaced from Gaza.
But Trump has said there’d be no need for them to return to Gaza because they would be housed in what he told Baier would be “safe communities, a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is.”
“In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real-estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent,” he said.
He also told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that the U.S. takeover of Gaza would “bring stability to the Middle East” because the area is, in his words, “a demolition site.”
“It’ll be reclaimed. It’ll be leveled out, fixed up. There won’t be anybody there. Hamas will be there,” he said.
