26/01/2025: President says he is discussing his plans for Gaza with Arab leaders and has asked them to take in more Palestinian regfugees
Speaking during a 20-minute question and answer session with reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, US President Donald Trump mentioned the potential for removing Palestinians from Gaza.
Trump said he discussed his Gaza vision on a call earlier in the day with King Abdullah of Jordan and would speak on Sunday with president Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt.
Trump said Saturday he’d like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip — potentially moving out enough of the population to “just clean out” the war-torn area to create a virtual clean slate.
“I’d like him to take people. I’d like Egypt to take people,” said Trump. “You’re talking about, probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know it’s, over.”‘
Speaking about the effects of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, Trump said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and that he told the king, “I’d love for you to take on more, cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess”.
He said of such a mass movement of Palestinians, “it could be temporary or long term”, adding that the area of the world that encompasses Gaza, “over centuries” has “had many, many conflicts”.
“Something has to happen,” Trump said. “But it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there.” He added: “So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
President Trump has ended his predecessor’s hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, lifting a pressure point that had been meant to reduce civilian casualties during the US ally’s war with Hamas in Gaza that is now halted by a tenuous ceasefire.
In a post on his Truth Social network Saturday, Trump said: “A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!”
“We released them today,” Trump said of the bombs. He told reporters on Air Force One, “They’ve been waiting for them for a long time. You know, they’ve been in storage for a long time and we released them today to Israel”.
Then-president Joe Biden halted the delivery of the large bombs in May as part of an effort to keep Israel from launching an all-out assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. A month later, Israel did take control of the city, but after the vast majority of the one million civilians that had been living or sheltering in Rafah had fled.
“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN in May when he held up the weapons. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah … I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem.”
The Biden pause had also held up 1,700 500-pound bombs that had been packaged in the same shipment to Israel, but weeks later those bombs were delivered.
Trump’s action, five days in to his term, comes as he has celebrated the first phase of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel that has paused the fighting and seen the release of some hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Negotiations have yet to begin in earnest on the more difficult second phase of the deal that would eventually see the release of all hostages held by Hamas and an enduring halt to the fighting.
The Israeli government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to resume its war against Hamas.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Trump also said that his first foreign destination “could be Saudi Arabia”, indicating that the Middle East would continue to be a focus for his administration.
Trump said he visited Saudi Arabia first after his last inauguration because the Arab kingdom agreed to buy billions of dollars worth of US merchandise.
“If that offer were right, I’d do that again,” he said.