On Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) Trump said he believed Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah might still change their minds, pointing to his apparent success in negotiating concessions from Canada and Mexico after threatening tariffs.
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But he also claimed Gazans could be resettled in other countries. “You could build four or five or six areas, it doesn’t have to be one area … and you build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, some place where they can live and not die,” he said.
“Because Gaza is a guarantee they’re going to end up dying. The same thing is going to happen again. It has happened over and over again, and it’s going to happen again as sure as you’re standing there.”
Trump made the comments sitting next to Netanyahu in the Oval Office; the first official visit to the White House by a foreign leader of the second Trump presidency.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, said Israel and the US would try to ensure the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas progressed to its planned second stage. With a slight at Joe Biden’s administration, Netanyahu suggested that was easier with Trump in charge.
A view of an area in Gaza City destroyed during fightings between the Israeli army against Hamas, in Gaza City.Credit: AP
“When Israel and the United States work together, when President Trump and I work together, the chances go up a lot,” he said. “It’s when we don’t work together … that creates problems. When the other side sees daylight between us, and occasionally in the last few years, to put it mildly, they saw daylight, then it’s more difficult.”
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, told CNN Trump’s plan to clear out Gaza violated international law and amounted to ethnic cleansing.
“This is a population that has been displaced multiple times over – many in 1948, many again in 1967, many multiple times since 2023,” he said. “It’s very clear that Palestinians do not want to be displaced and that they want to return to their hones, not just in Gaza but the homes they were kicked out of inside Israel in 1948.”
