Ethnic cleansing in fear as Trump asks Jordan, Egypt to take Gaza residents | Israel-Palestine Conflict News

United States President Donald Trump says he would like to “just clean up” Gaza, calling on Egypt and Jordan to take more Palestinians from the coastal enclave.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump said he had a call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi later on Sunday.

“I wish Egypt would take people,” Trump said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean the whole thing up and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’ “

Trump said he praised Jordan for successfully accepting Palestinian refugees and told the king, “I wish you would take more, because right now I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”

Israelis genocide in Gaza they displaced almost the entire 2.3 million people in Gaza, some of them more than once. Trump said Gazans could be relocated “temporarily or be long-term.”

“It’s literally a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” he said.

“So I’d rather deal with some Arab peoples and build a housing somewhere else, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

Ali Abdullah al-Arian, an associate professor of history at Georgetown University in Qatar, told Al Jazeera that Israeli officials indicated “very early in the war” that they would “ethnically cleanse” as much Palestinian territory as possible.

“That plan failed for a number of reasons, one of which was that the Arab leaders approached at the time simply refused to take on the additional Palestinian refugee population, partly because it was political in Egypt, which was especially considerable, which has been subjected as a possible destination for mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza,” he said.

Al-Arian said that the Palestinians themselves would not be interested in such a proposal from Trump. “They know all too well what it means to leave your home and what the status of Palestinian refugees has been like for the last 70 years,” he said, adding that the US president’s remarks “should not be taken seriously.”

Meanwhile, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed Trump’s idea to relocate Gazans to Egypt and Jordan.

“The idea of ​​helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea. After years of glorying in terrorism, they will be able to establish a new and good life in other places,” Smotrich said in a statement.

“Only thinking outside the box with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security,” he said.

“I will, with God’s help, work with the prime minister and the cabinet to ensure that there is an operational plan to implement this as soon as possible,” Smotrich said.

For Palestinians, any attempt to move them out of Gaza would evoke dark memories of what they call the “Nakba” or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.

Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza to the Sinai desert, which El-Sisi said could threaten the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.

Jordan is already home to about 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.

Sending 2,000 kilogram bombs

Israel’s 15-month war on the Palestinian enclave has killed more than 47,000 people, although residents and activists say the real toll could be much higher. The relentless bombardment also left much to be desired territory in ruinsgiven that the United Nations will assess the reconstruction will take many years.

However, Trump also said he had ended his predecessor’s hold on sending 2,000-kilogram (907-kilogram) bombs to Israel. “We released them today,” Trump said of the bombs. “They’ve been waiting a long time.”

Asked why he lifted the ban on those bombs, Trump replied: “Because they bought them.”

At the time, President Joe Biden held up the delivery of those bombs because of concerns about the effect they might have on the civilian population.

AND 2,000 kilograms of bombs It has a destruction radius of 35 meters (115 feet), according to the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA).

The US has historically provided significant foreign aid to Israel; A total of $297 billion (adjusted for inflation) between 1946 and 2023, of which $216 billion was in military aid and $81 billion in economic aid, according to data from the US Agency for International Assistance (USAID).

Israel is the highest cumulative recipient of us have been helping since its inception.

AND ceasefire in Gaza went into effect a week ago and led to the release of some Israeli prisoners in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.