Trump proposes sending Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan

US President Donald Trump has proposed moving residents of the Gaza Strip to Egypt and Jordan as part of a peace plan to “do the housework” in the Palestinian territory, where the truce between Israel and Hamas entered its second week on Sunday. The ceasefire that came into force on January 19 is holding and on Saturday allowed the exchange of four Israeli hostages for some 200 Palestinian prisoners.

But after 15 months of war triggered by the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, Donald Trump compared the territory on Saturday evening to a “demolition site” and said he had spoken to King Abdullah II of Jordan about the situation, adding that he would do the same on Sunday with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. “We are talking about 1.5 million people, and we are simply cleaning up that. You know, over the centuries, this site has experienced many conflicts. And I don't know, something must be happening.”Donald Trump told reporters aboard the presidential plane Air Force One.

“I would rather get involved with some Arab nations and build housing somewhere else where maybe they could live in peace for once”added the president. According to him, the displacement of Gaza residents could be “temporary or long term”. The vast majority of Gaza's 2.4 million residents have been displaced, often repeatedly by the war sparked by Hamas' attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

Delivery of American bombs to Israel

Donald Trump, who often boasted during his first presidential term that Israel “never had a better friend in the White House”also confirmed having released a delivery of 2,000 pounds (907 kg) bombs for its ally. The administration of former Democratic President Joe Biden last year suspended deliveries of such weapons, dropped by plane, both precise and with great destructive power, believing that they would cause a “great human tragedy”.

Donald Trump had exerted intense pressure on both camps to conclude a ceasefire agreement before his inauguration on January 20. As part of the deal, Israeli soldiers Daniella Gilboa, Karina Ariev, Liri Albag and Naama Levy, aged 19 to 20, were released on Saturday and taken to Israel, where they were reunited with their parents for long hugs including The army released photos.

The young women, who were carrying out their military service assigned to surveillance of the Gaza Strip when they were kidnapped, were then transferred by helicopter to a hospital near Tel Aviv. In the evening, relatives of hostages and their supporters demonstrated in Tel Aviv to demand the return of the other hostages, 87 people including 34 dead according to the army, out of a total of 251 kidnapped on October 7, 2023.

33 hostages against 1900 prisoners

In Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, a crowd waving Palestinian flags jubilantly welcomed some of the approximately 200 newly released Palestinians. Carried on the shoulders by residents, still dressed in prison uniform, they found their loved ones between hugs and tears. A first exchange of three Israeli hostages for 90 Palestinian prisoners took place on the first day of the truce, January 19, in the devastated Palestinian territory plunged into a serious humanitarian crisis.

The Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, the majority civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. The retaliatory offensive launched by Israel in the besieged Gaza Strip has left at least 47,283 dead, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas Health Ministry.

The first phase of the ceasefire agreement should last six weeks and allow the release of a total of 33 hostages against some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. During this first phase, the modalities of the second must be negotiated, which should allow the release of the last hostages, before the last stage relating to the reconstruction of Gaza and the restitution of the bodies of the hostages who died in captivity.

Resumption of fighting

But under pressure from the far right, part of Benjamin Netanyahu's government wants to resume fighting at the end of the first phase of the agreement, which would probably doom the last hostages. A sign of the difficulties in implementing the agreement, a last-minute dispute blocked on Saturday the start of the planned return to the north of the territory of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants displaced by more than 15 months of war.

Israel conditioned the opening of the «Netzarim Corridor»which isolates the south from the north of the Gaza Strip, with the surrender of a civilian hostage, Arbel Yehud, citing Hamas' non-compliance with a term of the truce agreement which has not been returned public, forcing him to release “first” civilians.,A Hamas leader told AFP on condition of anonymity that the civilian hostage would be “released on the occasion of the third exchange” scheduled for February 1st.