Trump wants Jordan and Egypt to accept more refugees, floats plan to ‘just clean out’ Gaza

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE —  President Trump said Saturday he’d like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip — potentially moving out enough of the population to “just clean out” the war-torn area to create a virtual clean slate.

During a 20-minute question-and-answer session with reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday, Trump also said he’s ended his predecessor’s hold on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. That lifts a pressure point that had been meant to reduce civilian casualties during Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza that is now halted by a tenuous cease-fire.

“We released them today,” Trump said of the bombs. “They’ve been waiting for them for a long time.” Asked why he lifted the ban on those bombs, Trump responded, “Because they bought them.”

Trump is known for being staunchly pro-Israel. Asked about his larger vision for the Gaza Strip, Trump said he had a call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak Sunday with President Abdel Fattah Sisi of Egypt.

“I’d like Egypt to take people,” Trump said. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’”

Trump said that he complimented Jordan for having accepted Palestinian refugees in the past and that he told Abdullah, “I’d love for you to take on more, ‘cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”

He said of such a mass movement of Palestinians, “it could be temporary or long term,” adding that Gaza and the wider Middle East has “had many, many conflicts” over centuries.

“Something has to happen,” Trump said. “But it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there.” He added: “So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

There was no immediate comment from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

Trump has offered nontraditional views on the future of Gaza in the past. He suggested after he was inaugurated Monday that Gaza has “really got to be rebuilt in a different way.”

He then added, ”Gaza is interesting. It’s a phenomenal location, on the sea. The best weather, you know, everything is good. It’s like, some beautiful things could be done with it, but it’s very interesting.”

His resuming delivery of large bombs, meanwhile, is a break with then-President Biden, who halted their delivery in May as part of an effort to keep Israel from launching an all-out assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. A month later, Israel did take control of the city, but after the vast majority of the 1 million civilians that had been living or sheltering in Rafah had fled.

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“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN in May when he held up the weapons. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah ... I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem.”

The Biden pause had also held up 1,700 500-pound bombs that had been packaged in the same shipment to Israel, but weeks later those bombs were delivered.

Trump’s action, five days into his term, comes as he has celebrated the first phase of a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel that has paused the fighting and seen the release of some hostages held by the militants in the Gaza Strip in return for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Negotiations have yet to begin in earnest on the more difficult second phase of the deal negotiated under Biden that would eventually see the release of all hostages held by Hamas and an enduring halt to the fighting.

Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 others hostage. More than 100 were freed in a weeklong truce the following month. Israel believes at least a third of the more than 90 captives still in Gaza are dead.

Israel’s air and ground war has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not differentiate between combatants and civilians but say women and children make up more than half the fatalities. The war has leveled wide swaths of Gaza, displaced the vast majority of its population and left hundreds of thousands of people at risk of famine.

Weissert and Miller write for the Associated Press and reported from Air Force One and Washington, respectively. Times staff contributed to this report.