Trump wants to ‘clean up’ Gaza and send Palestinians to settle in Egypt and Jordan

President Donald Trump’s proposal for Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the war-torn Gaza Strip has left two U.S. allies and the Palestinians themselves fearing that Israel will never allow them to return. There is a high possibility that you will be met with a hard “no” from.

Trump floated the idea on Saturday, urging leaders of the two Arab countries to take away Gaza’s current homeless population, saying, “We’re just going to clean up all of it.” He said. He added that resettling Gaza’s population “could be temporary or long-term.”

“It’s literally a demolition site,” Trump said, referring to the massive destruction caused by Israel’s 15-month military campaign against Hamas, which is currently paused by a fragile ceasefire.

“I would like to get involved in some of the Arab countries and build housing elsewhere.

There was no immediate comment from Egyptian, Jordanian, Israeli or Palestinian officials.

The idea could be welcomed by Israel. In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right governing partners have long advocated for what they describe as the voluntary relocation of large numbers of Palestinians in Gaza and the re-establishment of Jewish settlements.

Human rights groups have already accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, with United Nations experts saying that “violent and terrorizing methods” designed by an ethnic or religious group to remove civilians in a particular region are likely to be used by human rights groups. It is defined as a policy that

Before and during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel, approximately 700,000 Palestinians (the majority of the pre-war population) fled or were forced from their homes in present-day Israel.

Israel brought the majority of Palestinians within its borders and refused to allow them to return. Currently, there are approximately 6 million refugees and their descendants, the vast majority of whom live in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, which are occupied by ethnic Israelis.

In the 1967 Middle East war, 300,000 Palestinians fled, most to Jordan, when Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The decades-old refugee crisis was a major factor in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the thorniest issues in peace talks that last collapsed in 2009. surrounding Arab countries.

Many Palestinians are watching the latest war in Gaza. There, entire neighborhoods are shelled into oblivion and 90% of the 2.3 million population is forced from their homes and forced into the new Nakba. They fear that if many Palestinians leave Gaza, they too may not return.

Remaining firmly on the land, central to Palestinian culture, was on vivid display in Gaza on Sunday as thousands of people tried to return to the most heavily destroyed parts of the territory.

Egypt and Jordan vehemently rejected the idea of ​​taking in Gaza refugees early in the war when it was floated by Israeli officials.

Both countries have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war. They fear that permanent displacement of Gaza’s population will make that impossible.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi has also warned of the security implications of relocating large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, which borders Gaza.

Hamas and other extremist groups have deep roots in Palestinian society and are likely to work with refugees. That means future wars will be fought on Egyptian soil.

“The peace we achieved will disappear from our hands,” El-Sissi said in October 2023, after Hamas’ attacks on southern Israel sparked the war. “All for the sake of the idea of ​​eliminating the Palestinian cause.”

That’s what happened in Lebanon in the 1970s. The main extremist group at the time, Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, turned the south of the country into a launch pad for attacks on Israel. The refugee crisis and the actions of the PLO helped push Lebanon into a 15-year civil war in 1975. Israel invaded twice and occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.

Jordan, which clashed with and expelled the PLO under similar circumstances in 1970, already hosts more than 2 million Palestinian refugees, the majority of whom have been granted citizenship.

Israeli ultranarists have suggested that Jordan be considered a Palestinian state, allowing Israel to keep the West Bank, which it considers the Jewish biblical heartland. Jordan’s monarchy vehemently rejected that scenario.

It depends on how serious Trump is about the idea and how far he’s prepared to go.

U.S. tariffs – one of Trump’s favorite economic tools – or outright sanctions could be devastating for Jordan and Egypt. Both countries receive billions of dollars in American aid each year, and Egypt is already in an economic crisis.

But allowing refugees to flow in can also be destabilizing. Egypt says it currently hosts around 9 million migrants, including refugees from Sudan’s civil war. Jordan, with a population of less than 12 million, hosts more than 700,000 refugees, mainly from Syria.

U.S. pressure would also risk alienating key regional allies with whom Trump has good relations. El-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II, as well as the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all support the Palestinian cause.

That would complicate efforts to broker a historic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel.