Trump wants neighbours to take in Palestinians to ‘clean out’ Gaza

“Our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip endured death and destruction for 15 months… without leaving their land. Therefore, they will not accept any offers or solutions, even if they appear to be good intentions under the title of reconstruction, as announced by US President Trump’s proposals,” Bassem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the BBC.

“Our people, just as they have thwarted all plans for displacement and an alternative homeland over the decades, will also thwart such projects,” he added.

In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas “expressed strong rejection and condemnation of any projects aimed at displacing our people from the Gaza Strip”.

Asked about Trump’s comments, Abu Yahya Rashid, a man displaced in the southern city of Khan Younis said:

“We are the ones who decide our fate and what we want. This land is ours and the property of our ancestors throughout history. We will not leave it except as corpses.”

Decades of US foreign policy has committed to the creation of a Palestinian state, with Gaza as a key part. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects this.

Donald Trump has a long history of seemingly speaking off the cuff and floating ideas that never end up taking fruition.

However, the idea of encouraging Gazans to relocate to neighbouring countries has long been pushed by hardline right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government.

The former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from the Jewish Power party said he commended Trump “for the initiative to transfer residents from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt”.

“One of our demands from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to promote voluntary emigration,” he wrote on X.

The current Israeli finance minister, the far-right settler Bezelal Smotrich, has also said Palestinians should emigrate to neighbouring countries to allow Jewish settlements to be re-established in Gaza.

Such comments outrage Palestinians and will dismay proponents of a “two-state solution” – the establishment of an independent Palestinian State alongside Israel.

There are fears amongst Palestinians that those around President Trump are pushing him in a more extreme direction when it comes to policy in the Middle East.

This month, Trump’s nominee to be the next US ambassador to Israel, the evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee, rejected the idea of there ever being a Palestinian state outright.

“The Palestinians had their chance in Gaza,” he said in a US television interview.

“And look what happened there.”

Gaza has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

Huckabee’s comments contradict six decades of US policy in the Middle East during which Washington has long pushed the concept of a “two-state solution”.

The US has previously said that it opposes any forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank.