A key group of Arab nations have said they “firmly” reject any efforts to resettle or evict Palestinians from Gaza, after US President Donald Trump said he wanted to “clean out” the enclave and move its population to neighboring countries.
The foreign ministers of Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt issued a wide-ranging statement Saturday, saying they hoped to work with Trump on a two-state solution in the Middle East.
But they pushed back on Trump’s suggestion to relocate Palestinians from Gaza. Without specifically referencing the president’s proposal, the ministers reiterated a commitment to rebuilding the enclave while ensuring “the continued presence of Palestinians in their homeland.”
The nations “firmly rejected any actions that threaten these rights, including settlement expansion, forced evictions, home demolitions, land annexation, or the displacement of Palestinians through direct expulsion or coerced migration,” they wrote after a meeting of the foreign ministers in Cairo.
In January, Trump said he had spoken with the king of Jordan about potentially building housing elsewhere in the Middle East and moving more than 1 million Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries.
“I said to him that I’d love you to take on more, because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing.”
“I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now,” Trump said. “Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”
The statement from the Arab foreign ministers touched on a range of topics relating to Gaza’s reconstruction, as the fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel allows the region to assess the impact of a brutal 15-month conflict.
The group hailed “the important role played by the United States in facilitating the deal,” for which both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden have sought credit.
They also “called for the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and rejected any attempts to partition the Strip,” and pointed to the “indispensable role” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees or UNRWA, two days after Israel’s ban on the agency went into effect.