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Donald Trump asked Egypt and Jordan to record most of the population of the Gaza Strip, and said it was time to “clean” the area. Comments that Palestinians and Arabs will probably be outraged throughout the region.
“I want Egypt to accept people. And I want Jordan to accept people, ”the US President told reporters on board the Air Force One. “You speak of one and a half million people and we simply clear out the whole thing.”
Trump’s proposal would turn the decades of US politics to promote the two-state solution based on the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel in the Gaza Strip and in parts of the occupied West Bank.
Trump card Said that he had already discussed his proposal to move the population of the Gaza Strip on Saturday with King Abdullah of Jordan and will bring him up on Sunday in a phone call with Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president.
While the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas goes into the second week, Trump said that Gaza was “in the truest sense of the word a demolition, almost everything is destroyed and people die there, so I would rather deal with some of the Arab nations Build. “Another place where you may be able to live in peace for a change.”
Trump said that a population transfer could be “temporarily or long -term”. The pre -war population in the Gaza Strip was 2.2 million.
Amman and Cairo have been rejecting every transfer of Palestinians to their areas on the grounds since the beginning of the war in October 2023, this would be equivalent to “liquidation of the Palestinian cause” at the expense of the neighbors of Israel.
Sisi had previously said that the admission of Gaza residents would endanger the peace agreement of Egypt with Israel, since there was a risk that some of them would resume the fight against the Jewish state within the borders of Egypt.
Ha Hellyer, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington, said that such a transfer “could be deeply destabilizing, especially for Jordan (which already has a large Palestinian population) and possibly to move to the Sinai for Egypt, for example, because this is could mean. “Conflict between militant Palestinians and Israel”.
The two countries have a weak economy and need the support of the United States, but their leaders do not want to be seen as accomplices in something that Arab public opinion would call a second “nakba” or disaster – the migration of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees in the Neighboring countries in 1948, when the state of Israel was founded.
“It would be outraged by the Arabs because the historical records are very clear; Every time Palestinians were forced to leave part of Palestine, they never returned, ”said Hellyer. “The evacuation of the Gaza Strip from its residents would not find support from the Arabs or internationally, because that is the definition of ethnic cleaning.”
Such a step, he added, would undermine the prospects of normalizing relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia-a focus for a long time a focus of the United States’ diplomatic efforts in the region. “It would make it even less likely that the deal will come about in the near future,” said Hellyer.
Nevertheless, Trump’s Gaza proposal delighted the leaders of the extreme right Israel.
Finance Minister Bezhalel Smotrich described Trump’s proposal as a “wonderful idea” and added that “only thinking beyond the box and achieving new solutions will be successful.” . Peace and security ”.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former Israeli Minister of National Security, who resigned in the Gaza Strip last week in protest against the ceasefire agreement, “praised” Trump for spreading the idea.
Trump also confirmed that the Pentagon had lifted the exposure of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel imposed by the bid government. “We released them today and they will have them,” he said. “You paid for it and waited a long time.”
The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas was already under pressure on Saturday despite the successful release of four Israeli soldiers from captivity in the Gaza Strip and 200 Palestinian prisons from Israeli prisons.
At the weekend, Israeli civil servants said that Hamas had violated the agreement mediated by the USA after not being able to relieve the last still living civilian hostage – Arbel Yehud.
Mediators were working behind the scenes to find a solution for Jehud’s release, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that hundreds of thousands of expelled Palestinians would not allow, as required to return to the north of the Gaza Strip “Be in the deal.
Israel’s ceasefire with the Lebanon also seemed to be in danger, since Israel made it clear at the end of last week that the two -month period for the withdrawal of its armed forces from the South Libanon would not meet on Sunday.
Additional reporting by Sarah Dadouch in Beirut
