Trump urges Jordan, Egypt to accept more Palestinian refugees: ‘Clean up this whole thing’

President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he wanted Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries to accept more Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip, potentially evicting enough people to “just clean up” the war-torn area between Israel and Hamas, which is now under a ceasefire.

Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he had spoken with Jordan’s King Abdullah II earlier in the day and would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on Sunday.

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

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Such a drastic displacement would contradict the Palestinian identity and deep connection with Gaza.

“Palestinians in Gaza — like Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel — overwhelmingly trace their origins to the towns and villages of the region that now includes Israel and Palestine,” former US Rep. Justin Amash, who is Palestinian, wrote on X. “the idea that are they some kind of spillover from other countries in the so-called Arab world—that they are merely interchangeable with other ‘Arabs’—is a false but routinely used rhetorical device to erase their history on earth.”

“They are descendants of the Canaanites, Israelites, Phoenicians and other ancient Levantine peoples,” said Amash, a libertarian. “Their origins overlap with those of their Jewish neighbors, but they are converts to Christianity, Islam and other religions. Any attempt to force them out or pressure them to leave under threat of force is simply ethnic cleansing.”

But Trump said the part of the world that includes Gaza “has had many, many conflicts” over the centuries and that resettlement “could be temporary or long-term.”

Something has to happen, Trump said. “But it’s literally a place of destruction right now. Almost everything is demolished, and people are dying there. So I’d rather get involved with some Arab nations and build houses somewhere else, where maybe they can live in peace for a change.”

High-ranking Israeli officials he said, according to Israel’s Channel 12, that “Trump’s statement about the migration of Gazans to Muslim countries is not a slip but part of a much broader move than it appears, coordinated with Israel.”

On Monday, after he was inaugurated, Trump suggested that Gaza “really has to be rebuilt in a different way.”

“Gaza is interesting,” he added. “Phenomenal location, on the sea. The best weather, you know, everything is good. Like, you could do some nice things with it, but it’s very interesting.”

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Trump also said Saturday that he ended former President Joe Biden’s ban on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that was in place during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, which has been under a week-long ceasefire.

We released them today, Trump said of the bombs. – They were waiting for them for a long time. Trump said he lifted the ban on bombs “because they bought them.”

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Biden halted the shipment of the bombs in May in an effort to prevent Israel from launching an all-out assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

For the duration of 15 months the war in Gaza it began when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, prompting a military retaliation by Israeli forces. Almost 100 hostages remained imprisoned in Gaza.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.