The newly elected president of the United States, Donald Trump, advocates a “cleansing” of Gaza that involves the expulsion of at least 1.5 million of the 2.3 million people who inhabit the Palestinian enclave and who he would like to welcome. Egypt and Jordan. The proposal coincides with the leadership of the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has applauded the statements. Also, with the deepest fears of Cairo and Amman, whose main concern during the war in Gaza () has been to avoid an avalanche of refugees that would generate instability and end up becoming permanent ethnic cleansing of the Strip. Their respective diplomacies have vehemently rejected Trump’s idea.
“I would like Egypt to take people” and “Jordan to take more,” the president said to the reporters who accompanied him on Saturday night on his plane, the Air Force One, heading to Florida. “We are probably talking about a million and a half people. We just wiped all that out and said, ‘You know? It’s over,” he added after having a telephone conversation with King Abdullah of Jordan throughout Saturday and before the one scheduled this Sunday with the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattá Al Sisi. Jordan’s state agency does not mention the request in its information about the call.
Trump—who has shown little knowledge of international politics—does not seem to use the 1.5 million figure as a target, but rather as the population that mistakenly believes they own the Strip. And he points out that they could live in Egypt and Jordan “temporarily or long term.” Both the Palestinians and both Arab countries fear that any exit would end up becoming definitive, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled before the advance of the Zionist militias and, after the creation of the State of Israel and the start of the first war with the Arab neighbors, from their army. With their descendants, Palestinian refugees today number in the millions and have never been able to return to their homes. More than two million, in Jordan, the country that absorbed – and offered nationality – the most Nakba refugees.
The first of the two countries mentioned by Trump to react was Jordan. “Our rejection of the displacement of Palestinians is firm and will not change. “Jordan is for the Jordanians and Palestine is for the Palestinians,” said Su. Then, Egyptian diplomacy has issued a statement in which it rejects “any” forced displacement of Palestinians from their land, “whether temporary or long-term.”
Gaza is “a real mess,” says the US president about the territory of just 365 square kilometers where in the 15 months of the current conflict, more than 47,000 people have died, most of them women and children, during attacks by the troops. Israeli occupation. The president justifies his plan precisely without expressly referring to the colonizing desire of the most radical sector of his Israeli ally. “It is literally a demolition zone, everything is destroyed and people are dying, so I prefer to engage with some Arab countries to build housing in other locations where [los gazatíes] Maybe they can live in peace,” he detailed.
On the day of his inauguration, the president already referred to the Strip as a territory of potential tourist interest. “It has to be rebuilt in a different way. Gaza is interesting, it is a phenomenal place. At sea, the best climate. Everything’s fine. You can do beautiful things there. It’s very interesting. “Fantastic things can be done,” he told reporters present in the Oval Office of the White House. His special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, is a well-known real estate developer.
More bombs against Gaza
Trump’s statements come a few hours after the White House gave instructions to the Pentagon to rescind them, the portal reported Axios citing three Israeli sources. Biden’s decision to halt the delivery of that ammunition in May caused one of the biggest crises in the relationship between the United States and Israel during the war. The Israeli Government was notified of the revocation on Friday, and Trump celebrated the shipment of the material on Saturday on his social network: “Israel ordered and paid for many things that have not been sent by Biden. Now they are on their way! Around 1,800 MK-84 bombs, weighing 900 kilos, which were stored in the United States, will be delivered to Israel in the coming days. “Thank you, President Trump, for fulfilling your promise to give Israel the tools it needs to defend itself, confront our common enemies, and ensure a future of peace and prosperity,” Netanyahu reacted in a video message in English.
His Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, has also thanked Trump: “The region is safer when Israel has what it needs to defend itself.” The Israeli Armed Forces dropped hundreds of 900-kilogram bombs in the first weeks of the war. Biden stopped its shipment for fear of its use in the announced invasion of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians were concentrated.
Furthermore, in a note of the business prospects that the horizon of the reconstruction of Gaza may have for the United States, an American private security company will take over control of the passage to the north of Gaza in the coming days after the Israeli withdrawal, scheduled for this Saturday, from the Netzarim corridor. American contractors will be in charge of inspecting vehicles entering the north of the enclave under the terms of the ceasefire, not Gazans returning to the area on foot.
The euphemism of “Voluntary emigration”
The applause for Trump from the most radical sector of Israeli power has come almost immediately, like that of the Minister of National Security until a few days ago, who has left the Government due to his opposition to the truce in Gaza. “I congratulate US President Trump for the initiative to transfer Gaza residents to Jordan and Egypt,” he noted on his profile on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
Euphemistically, Ben Gvir, other ultranationalists and some figures from other latitudes of the Israeli political arc speak of “voluntary emigration”, aware of the impossibility of forcibly displacing all those who live there, but eager to maintain a permanent military presence and — in the case of religious nationalism—reconstruct the Jewish settlements built after the capture of Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War and which Ariel Sharon unilaterally evacuated in 2005. “If there were only 100,000 or 200,000 Arabs in Gaza, and not two million [en referencia a los 2,3 millones de gazatíes]it would be different,” said one of its main defenders in December 2023, . In his message, Ben Gvir urges Netanyahu to take note of the US president’s idea and implement it “now!”
Smotrich has also been quick to approve Trump’s plan. “The idea of helping them find other places to start a new and better life is excellent” after “76 years during which the majority of Gaza’s population has been forcibly kept in harsh conditions to preserve the aspiration to destroy the State of Israel,” he celebrates in a statement in which he adds that he will work with Netanyahu to “implement this idea as soon as possible.”
Trump’s electoral victory in November determined the signing of the ceasefire in Gaza after a year of fruitless negotiations, largely blocked by Netanyahu. But the.
Among what he signed as soon as he took office on January 20, is the repeal of sanctions against violent settlers and which represented an unprecedented measure against Israeli citizens by the United States.
