US President Donald Trump on Sunday reacted to Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad’s defiant response to a plan to “cleanse” Gaza, as a fragile ceasefire aimed at permanently ending the war entered its second week.
There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but a far-right minister welcomed Trump’s idea as “good.” Meanwhile, a dispute over the final prisoner exchange under the deal has blocked a large crowd of Palestinians from returning to the north of the territory, blocking the coastal road.
The deal saw the release of four Israeli female hostages, all soldiers and 200 Palestinian prisoners to jubilant scenes on Saturday, the second such exchange so far. After 15 months of war, Trump said Gaza had become a “land of destruction.” He said he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about evacuating Palestinians from the territory.
“I want Egypt to take people and Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, adding that he expected to speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday. Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants.
For the Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of the Arab world’s ‘Nakba’, or catastrophe, – the mass displacement of Palestinians during the creation of Israel 75 years ago. Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai desert, which President Sisi said could jeopardize the peace agreement Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.
According to the United Nations, there are 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan. “You’re talking about maybe 1.5 million people and we have to clear all that space,” Trump said of Gaza, which has a population of about 2.4 million. “I want to engage with some Arab countries and build housing in different places where they can live peacefully for a change,” he said, adding that Gaza residents could be relocated “temporarily or permanently.”
Condemned
Hamas political bureau member Bassim Naim told AFP that the Palestinians would “thwart such projects” just as “they have been making similar plans for displacement and alternative homelands for decades.” “Despite their clear good intentions under the banner of reconstruction proposed by US President Trump, the people of Gaza will not accept any proposal or solution,” he said.
Islamic Jihad, which fights alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “reprehensible” and said it encouraged “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land.” But Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right opponent of the Gaza deal, welcomed Trump’s suggestion as a good idea to “help them start another good life.”
“Only thinking with new solutions can bring about peace and security,” he said. According to the United Nations, almost all Gazans have been displaced by the war that began after Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. The United Nations says about 70 percent of buildings in the area have been damaged or destroyed.
Waiting to enter
On Sunday, carts and carts filled with goods crowded a road near the Netzarim Corridor, which Israel has blocked, blocking the expected return of millions of people to northern Gaza. Gaza’s Civil Defense Agency said “tens of thousands” were waiting in the area to move north, with aerial footage showing crowds stretching hundreds of meters in three directions.
Israel announced on Saturday that it would not allow Palestinians to return to the north until the release of Arbel Yehud, a civilian female hostage who was supposed to be released. Netanyahu’s office said on Sunday that Hamas had violated the ceasefire by not releasing him on Saturday. It also said they had violated the agreement by not providing a “comprehensive list of the status of all hostages.”
Hamas later said blocking the return route north was also a violation of the agreement and that they had provided ‘all necessary guarantees’ for the liberation of Yehud. Israel has also reached a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the health ministry and army said on Sunday that Israeli forces had killed three local residents and a Lebanese soldier, and that hundreds of people were trying to return to their homes.
The first phase of the Gaza deal calls for the release of 33 prisoners in a phased manner over six weeks, in exchange for the release of approximately 1,900 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The ceasefire has led to an increase in food, fuel, medicine and other aid into rubble-covered Gaza, but the United Nations says the “humanitarian situation remains dire.”
Of the 251 hostages captured during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, 87 remain in Gaza. The military said 34 of them were killed. According to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures, the Hamas attack killed 1,210 people, most of them civilians.
Israel’s retaliatory attacks have killed at least 47,283 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which the United Nations considers reliable.
