At a joint news conference Tuesday night with President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump outlined his plan for the U.S. to take over the Gaza Strip, moving their Palestinian residents somewhere safe while the area is redeveloped. It didn’t take long for reactions from Gaza residents to come in.
Saeed Abu Elaish’s wife, two of his daughters, and two dozen others from his extended family were killed by Israeli airstrikes over the past 15 months. His house in northern Gaza was destroyed. He and surviving family now live in a tent set up in the rubble of his home. He says he will not be driven out after President Donald Trump called for transferring all Palestinians from Gaza so the United States could take over the devastated territory and rebuild it for others. Rights groups said his comments were tantamount to a call for “ethnic cleansing” and forcible expulsion. “We categorically reject and will resist any plans to deport and transfer us from our land,” he said from the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Trump’s call for depopulating Gaza has stunned Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands in the territory rushed to return to their homes, even if destroyed, as soon as they could following the ceasefire reached last month between Israel and Hamas.
Though some experts speculated that Trump’s proposal might be a negotiating tactic, Palestinians across the region saw in it an effort to erase them completely from their homeland, a continuation of the expulsion and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.
