The Guardian / January 26, 2025
US President Donald Trump has indicated that he would like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One yesterday, Trump, an ally of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”
Trump also told reporters that he had call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi on Sunday.
The newly inaugurated Republican president said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and that he told the king: “I’d love for you to take on more, cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.” For context, Jordan is already home to more than 2.39 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the UN.
Trump added:
I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.
Trump said that the potential housing “could be temporary” or “could be long-term”. During Israel’s 15 month war on Gaza, more than two-thirds of buildings have been destroyed or damaged by one of the most intensive bombardments in modern times. It has sparked a refugee crisis as large parts of the territory are now uninhabitable.
Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad says Trump’s idea of relocating Palestinians encourages ‘war crimes’
Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which fought alongside Hamas in the war against Israel, has reacted to Donald Trump’s idea of possibly relocating Palestinian people to Egypt and Jordan, both of which border Gaza (see post at 08.54 to read the US president’s comments). It said: “This proposal falls within the framework of encouraging war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land.”
A senior Hamas official, meanwhile, told the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency: “As they have foiled every plan for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades, our people will also foil such projects,” Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas political bureau, said.
Israel’s war on Gaza displaced almost the entire 2.3 million people in Gaza, many of them multiple times (through a combination of forced evacuation orders and relentless airstrikes across the territory). Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has previously rejected the idea of a forced displacement of Palestinians into the Sinai peninsula, amid concern that those displaced may never be able to return.
Shortly after the Hamas-led 7 October attack on southern Israel, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned against trying to push Palestinian refugees into Egypt or Jordan, saying that the humanitarian situation must to be dealt with inside Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
As we mentioned in a previous post, Jordan is already home to millions of registered Palestinian refugees.
