Palestinian resistance teams Hamas and Islamic Jihad condemned a proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump to “clean out” Gaza on Sunday, as a fragile truce geared toward ending the conflict between Israel and Hamas entered its second week.
There was no rapid response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu however a far-right minister welcomed Trump’s “great” concept.
Israel and Hamas accused one another of cease-fire breaches linked to the most recent hostage-prisoner swap that occurred on Saturday underneath the truce deal that got here into impact on Jan. 19.
The swap noticed 4 Israeli ladies hostages, all troopers, and 200 Palestinian prisoners launched to joyful scenes, within the second such change to this point.
But after 15 months of conflict, Trump referred to as Gaza a “demolition site” and stated that he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about shifting Palestinians out of the territory.
“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump informed reporters aboard Air Force One, including that he anticipated to speak to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi on Sunday.
Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants.
For Palestinians, any try to maneuver them from Gaza would evoke darkish historic recollections of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or disaster – the mass displacement of Palestinians throughout Israel’s creation 75 years in the past.
Egypt has beforehand warned in opposition to any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which el-Sissi stated may jeopardize the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.
Jordan is already residence to round 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, in response to the United Nations.
“You’re talking about probably a million and half people and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump stated of Gaza, whose inhabitants is about 2.4 million.
“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump stated, including that shifting Gaza’s inhabitants may very well be “temporarily or could be long term.”
‘Deplorable’
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, informed AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects” as they’ve performed to related plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades.”
Gazans, he stated, “will not accept any offers or solutions, even if their apparent intentions are good under the banner of reconstruction, as proposed by U.S. President Trump.”
Islamic Jihad, which fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, referred to as Trump’s concept “deplorable” and stated that it encourages “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land.”
Far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the Gaza truce deal, stated that Trump’s suggestion of “helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea.”
He added: “Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security.”
The overwhelming majority of Gaza’s folks have been displaced, usually a number of instances, by Israel’s genocidal Gaza conflict, triggered by the Hamas incursion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The United Nations says near 70% of the territory’s buildings are broken or destroyed.
Source: www.dailysabah.com