President Donald Trump has said he is “committed to buying and owning” the Gaza Strip and relocating the two million Palestinians living there, despite global condemnation of the plan he unveiled last week.
He told reporters that he might allow Middle East countries to be involved in rebuilding parts of the territory and that he would make sure the Palestinian refugees would “live beautifully”.
Both the Palestinian Authority and the armed group Hamas, whose 16-month war with Israel has caused widespread devastation in Gaza, reiterated that Palestinian land was “not for sale”.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s proposal as “revolutionary and creative”.
It comes three weeks into a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, during which Hamas has released some of the Israeli hostages it is holding in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
More than 48,180 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Most of Gaza’s population has also been displaced multiple times, almost 70% of buildings are estimated to be damaged or destroyed, the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed, and there are shortages of food, fuel, medicine and shelter.
Trump repeated his pledge to take over post-war Gaza as he flew to New Orleans on Air Force One to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday.
“I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza. As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it. Other people may do it through our auspices. But we’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back,” he said, without explaining who he would buy Gaza from and how the US would own it.
“There’s nothing to move back into. The place is a demolition site… The remainder will be demolished,” he added. “But we’ll make it into a very good site for future development by somebody.”
Trump said people from all over the world would be able to move to Gaza and promised to “take care of the Palestinians”.
“We’re going to make sure they live beautifully and in harmony and peace and that they’re not murdered.”
“They don’t want to go back to Gaza. They only go back because they have no alternative,” he added.
The president also again expressed confidence that he could persuade neighbouring Egypt and Jordan to help, despite their previous public rejections of his requests to take in refugees from Gaza.
Jordan’s King Abdullah is due to meet Trump in Washington on Tuesday, while Israel’s president said Trump would also hold talks with Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the coming days.
Israel’s prime minister praised Trump’s proposal at a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“For a full year, we have been told that on the ‘day after’, the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation], the Palestinian Authority, needs to be in the Strip,” Netanyahu said.
“President Trump came with a completely different vision, much better for the State of Israel, a revolutionary and creative vision, which we are discussing. He is very determined to carry it out. This also opens many possibilities before us.”
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry said: “The rights of our people and our land are not for sale, exchange or bargaining.”
“The Israeli government and Prime Minister Netanyahu are trying to cover up the crimes of genocide, forced displacement and annexation which they have committed against our people,” it added.
“For this purpose, they continue to promote slogans and positions which are separate from the political reality and far from the requirements of the political solutions to the conflict.”
A political official from Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said Trump’s remarks were “absurd” and reflected “deep ignorance of Palestine and the region”.
“Gaza is not a property to be sold and bought. It is an integral part of our occupied Palestinian land,” Izzat al-Rishq stated.
The UN human rights office warned that any forcible transfer in, or deportation of, people from occupied territory was strictly prohibited under international law.
Palestinians also fear a repeat of the Nakba, or “catastrophe”, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes before and during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.
Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz also strongly criticised Trump’s plan on Sunday, calling it a “scandal”.
“I say this with the Egyptian government, with the Jordanian government and with the people who can count on human dignity: the relocation of a population is unacceptable and against international law,” he said during a televised pre-election debate.
Palestinian officials and Arab states also condemned comments made by Netanyahu in a TV interview last week.
An Israeli journalist was discussing efforts to normalise diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia when he mistakenly said there would be no progress without the creation of a “Saudi state”.
“A Palestinian state.” Netanyahu corrected him, before adding: “Unless you want the Palestinian state to be in Saudi Arabia? They have a lot of territory.”
Egypt called the suggestion “reckless” and something that “directly infringes upon Saudi sovereignty”, while Jordan said it was “a flagrant violation of international law”.
Saudi Arabia said on Sunday that it appreciated the “condemnation, disapproval and total rejection announced by the brotherly countries towards what Benjamin Netanyahu stated regarding the displacement of the Palestinian people from their land”.
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