Donald Trump suggests Palestinians would prefer to leave Gaza and considers permanent resettlement
President Donald Trump said that Palestinians would ‘love’ to leave Gaza and suggested resettling them ‘permanently’.
Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump said that Gaza is ‘very dangerous’ and that Palestinians are there because they have no alternative.
‘Oh I think they’d love to leave Gaza if they had an option,’ said Trump on Tuesday afternoon.
‘Right now they don’t have an option. What are they going to do? They have to go back to Gaza.’
President Donald Trump (right) spoke to the press while meeting Israelis Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) in the Oval Office (Picture: AP)
While sitting next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump further floated resettling Palestinians from the area torn by the Israel-Hamas war.
‘I think it should be a location that’s going to make people happy. You look over the decades, it’s all death in Gaza. This has been happening for years. It’s all death,’ Trump said.
‘If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people, permanently, in nice homes where they can be happy and not be shot and not be killed and not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza.’
Trump has previously called on Arab nations including Egypt and Jordan to temporarily house Palestinians. He suggested for the first time that the resettlement be permanent on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump (left) welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (right) at the entrance of the White House on Tuesday (Picture: Reuters)
‘I hope that we could do something where they wouldn’t want to go back. Who would want to go back?’ he said. ‘They’ve experienced nothing but death and destruction.’
However, many Palestinians consider Gaza their homeland and want to stay and rebuild the territory.
Netanyahu met with Trump as the second phase of negotiations in a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas are underway.
Trump’s advisers earlier said that a three-to-five-year timeline for rebuilding the territory as detailed in a temporary truce deal is not viable.
President Donald Trump (middle) and Vice President JD Vance (right) meet with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) in the Oval Office of the White House (Picture: Getty Images)
The US president then told reporters that ‘the Gaza thing has never worked’.
Trump also seemed open to possibly reconsidering a plan he proposed in 2020 calling for an independent Palestinian state. During his first term, Trump backed a two-state solution to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestinians.
But Trump acknowledged that ‘a lot of plans change with time and that ‘a lot of death has occurred since I left and now came back’.
‘Now we are faced with a situation that’s different – in some ways better and in some ways worse,’ he said.
President Donald Trump speaks as he meets with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office (Picture: AP)
‘But we are faced with a very complex and difficult situation that we’ll solve.’
Earlier on Tuesday while signing an executive order for the US to put maximum pressure on Tehran, Trump remarked that he told his advisers to obliterate Iran if the nation assassinates him. The Justice Department in November revealed that it had foiled an Iranian plot to kill him prior to the 2024 election.
‘If they did that, they would be obliterated,’ Trump said.
‘I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left.’
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