Trump says Palestinians should move to 'fresh piece of land' ahead of talks with Netanyahu
Trump says Palestinians should move to 'fresh piece of land' ahead of talks with Netanyahu
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Trump has repeatedly pitched moving Palestinians from the land they’ve long counted on as the location of a future state. President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that Palestinians who’ve been displaced from Gaza during war that began after the October 7 terror attacks on Israel should be relocated to a more habitable location in Egypt or Jordan because of the devastation wrought by more than a year of Israeli bombing.
Speaking in the Oval Office as he signed executive orders and other documents just hours before he was set to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an official visit to the White House, Trump suggested Palestinians should be furnished with a fresh location to be constructed at the expense of other parties. “I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land, and we get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” said Trump, who called the Gaza Strip “a demolition site” unfit for habitation.
He added: “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 ... I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had just decades and decades of death.”. Trump told reporters that the hypothetical Palestinian relocation could be to Egypt or Jordan — two countries that have repeatedly rejected the idea of hosting more Palestinian refugees — or “other places” that “could be very beautiful and safe and nice.”.
Currently, more than 2.1 million people live in the 141 square miles that make up Gaza Strip, making the Hamas-controlled territory one of the world’s densest population centers. Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, both Gaza and the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank were meant to comprise parts of a future Palestinian state that was long the end goal of a US-led peace process that has been stalled for decades.
Forcibly displacing Gaza residents who’ve already had to relocate from their homes within the territory could be considered ethnic cleansing under international law, but Trump told reporters he thinks Palestinians who currently reside there would “love to leave Gaza if they had an option.”. “Right now, they don't have an option. What are they going to do? They have to go back to Gaza,” he said.
