Calling Gaza a "demolition site," President Trump said he wants Jordan and Egypt take in more Palestinian refugees. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday that he had spoken with Jordan's King Abdullah that day about the possibility. "I said to him, 'I'd love you take on more,' because I'm looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it's a mess. It's a real mess," Trump said. He added that he intends to talk with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Sunday, Axios reports. The refugees' resettlement could be temporary or long term, he said.
"You're talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing," Trump said. Any forced displacement has been opposed by human-rights groups, the Biden administration, and Israel's Arab neighbors, per the Washington Post. Arab nations say moving Palestinians out could hurt efforts at statehood. But there's support in Israel among far-right politicians, with one calling "the voluntary emigration of Gaza Arabs to countries around the world" the best humanitarian solution for the region, including the residents of Gaza. According to a UN agency, Jordan has taken accepted about 2.4 million registered Palestinian refugees, granting citizenship to most of them.
Of Gaza, the president said, per Axios, "Almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change." A senior Hamas official rejected the idea, per the AP, saying Palestinians won't accept it "even if seemingly well-intentioned under the guise of reconstruction." If Israel would lift its blockade, Bassem Naim said, Palestinians would be able to rebuild Gaza "even better than before." (More Israel-Hamas war stories.)