The Palestinian President has said he strongly rejects President Donald Trump’s proposal for the US to virtually colonise Gaza and resettle the 2.1 million Palestinians living there.
“We will not allow the rights of our people… to be infringed on,” Mahmoud Abbas stressed, warning that Gaza was “an integral part of the State of Palestine” and forced displacement would be a serious violation of international law.
Hamas, whose 15-month war with Israel has caused widespread devastation, said Trump’s plan would “put oil on the fire” in the region.
The idea has been rejected by countries in the region such as Jordan and Egypt, and key US allies, while the UN issued a warning against “any form of ethnic cleansing”.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said Gaza was an integral part of a future Palestinian state, telling a meeting in New York the rights of Palestinians to live as human beings in their own land was slipping further out of reach.
The world, he said, had “seen a chilling, systematic dehumanisation and demonisation of an entire people”.
Saudi Arabia said Palestinians would “not move” from their land and it would not normalise ties with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Trump’s proposal could “change history” and was “worth paying attention to”.
Later on Wednesday, the White House sought to clarify President Trump’s proposal, with spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt telling journalists the President was committed to rebuilding Gaza and “temporarily” relocating its residents. Trump said on Tuesday the displacement would be permanent.
She also said the President had not committed to sending US troops to Gaza.
Trump’s comments come two weeks after the start of a fragile ceasefire in Gaza, during which Hamas has released some 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 47,540 people have been killed and 111,600 injured in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Trump’s first major remarks on Middle East policy shattered decades of US thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” he told reporters at the White House on Tuesday night, alongside the visiting Israeli prime minister.
“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings.”
Trump said Palestinians living in Gaza would have to be relocated to achieve his vision of creating “the Riviera of the Middle East”, and that they would be housed in Jordan, Egypt and other countries.
When asked whether the refugees would eventually be allowed to return, he said that “the world’s people” would live in Gaza, before adding “also Palestinians”.
Trump also brushed aside previous objections from Jordan and Egypt’s leaders to taking in refugees, insisting that they would eventually “open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done”.
Netanyahu later said there was nothing wrong with idea of “allowing the Gazans who want to leave to leave” the territory.
“They can leave, they can then come back, they can relocate and come back. But you have to rebuild Gaza,” he told Fox News on Wednesday.
