Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – US President Donald Trump said Palestinians would have no right of return to Gaza under his US takeover plan, describing his proposal in excerpts of an interview released Monday as a “real estate development for the future.”
Trump told Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier that “I would own it” and that there could be as many as six different sites for Palestinians to live outside Gaza — under the plan which the Arab world has rejected.
“No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing,” Trump said when Baier asked if the Palestinians would have the right to return to the war-battered enclave.
“In other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it’ll be years before you could ever — it’s not habitable.”
Trump first revealed the shock Gaza plan during a joint news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, drawing outrage from Palestinians.
The US president pressed his case for Palestinians to be moved out of Gaza, devastated by the Israel-Hamas war, and for Egypt and Jordan to take them.
In the Fox interview — which will be broadcast Monday after the first half was screened ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday –Trump said he would build “beautiful communities” for the more than two million Palestinians who live in Gaza.
“Could be five, six, could be two. But we’ll build safe communities, a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” added Trump.
“In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent.”
Saudi, Arab nations condemn Netanyahu’s remarks
Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries condemned on Sunday remarks by Israel’s prime minister who appeared to suggest in an interview that a Palestinian state could be established on Saudi territory.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks, which some Israeli media characterized as a joke, came with the region already on edge after US President Donald Trump proposed taking over the territory and displacing Gazans abroad.
Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul Gheit said on Sunday that the thinking behind Netanyahu’s remarks “is unacceptable and reflects a complete detachment from reality”, adding that such ideas “are nothing more than mere fantasies or illusions”.
The Saudi foreign ministry stressed its “categorical rejection to such statements that aim to divert attention from the continuous crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian brothers in Gaza”.
A ministry statement welcomed “the condemnation, disapproval and total rejection announced by the brotherly countries towards what Benjamin Netanyahu stated regarding the displacement of the Palestinian people”.
In a television interview on Thursday, right-wing Israeli journalist Yaakov Bardugo was discussing with Netanyahu the prospect of diplomatic normalization with Saudi Arabia when he appeared to misspeak, attributing to Riyadh the stance that there would be “no progress without a Saudi state”.
“Palestinian state?” Netanyahu corrected him.
“Unless you want the Palestinian state to be in Saudi Arabia,” the Israeli premier quipped. “They (the Saudis) have plenty of territory.”
Netanyahu went on to describe the talks leading up to the so-called Abraham Accords, in which several Arab countries normalized ties with Israel, concluding: “I think we should allow this process to take its course.”
But the suggestion of a state for Palestinians outside the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank prompted an outpouring of regional condemnation, including from Qatar, Egypt and the Palestinian foreign ministry, which described the remarks as “racist”.
Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned them as “inflammatory and a clear violation of international law”, stressing that the Palestinians have the “right to establish an independent, sovereign state” alongside Israel.
The foreign ministry of the United Arab Emirates denounced Netanyahu’s comments as “reprehensible and provocative” in a statement, calling them “a blatant violation of international law and the United Nations charter”.
For Palestinians, any attempt to force them out of Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba” or catastrophe — the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.
In its statement, Saudi Arabia said “this extremist, occupying mentality does not understand what the Palestinian land means” to Palestinians.
Such a mindset, it added, “does not think that the Palestinian people deserve to live in the first place, as it has completely destroyed the Gaza Strip” and killed tens of thousands “without the slightest human feeling or moral responsibility”.
Israel withdraws from key Gaza road
A Hamas official said Israeli troops completed their withdrawal on Sunday from a strategic road cutting through the Gaza Strip, part of a fragile truce deal that Israel said it was implementing.
But diplomatic tensions were high after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to suggest in an interview that a Palestinian state could be established on Saudi territory, drawing the ire of Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations.
As negotiations are set to begin on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire, which is intended to pave the way for a permanent end to the war, Palestinians on Sunday were able to cross the Netzarim Corridor, where an Israeli checkpoint used to stand.
An official from the Hamas-run interior ministry said “Israeli forces have dismantled their positions… and completely withdrawn their tanks from the Netzarim Corridor on Salaheddin Road, allowing vehicles to pass freely in both directions.”
AFP journalists saw no troops in the area as cars, buses, pickup trucks and donkey carts travelled both north and south along the road.
Gaza resident Mahmoud al-Sarhi said that “arriving at the Netzarim Corridor meant death until this morning”.
This is “the first time I saw our destroyed house,” he told AFP of his home in the nearby Zeitun area.
“The entire area is in ruins. I cannot live here.”
A senior Hamas official said Israel’s Israeli withdrawal from Netzarim had been scheduled for Sunday under the terms of the truce that took effect on January 19.
Asked about Sunday’s withdrawal, an Israeli security official told AFP on condition of anonymity: “We are preparing to implement the ceasefire agreement according to the guidelines of the political echelon.”
This came as Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces shot dead three civilians in Gaza City north of Netzarim Sunday, with the military saying it fired “warning shots” and hit Palestinians who had approached troops.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, and the ceasefire agreed ahead of US President Donald Trump’s inauguration has largely halted the fighting.
‘I thought you were dead’
The 2023 attack, the deadliest in Israeli history, resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said the war has killed at least 48,181 people in the territory.
Under the current ceasefire, Israel and Hamas on Saturday completed their fifth hostage-prisoner exchange, with three Israeli hostages and 183 Palestinian prisoners released.
Netanyahu denounced Hamas as “monsters” after the handover of the three captives, who appeared emaciated and were forced to speak on a stage flanked by Hamas gunmen.
The hospital treating former hostages Or Levy and Eli Sharabi said they were in a “poor medical condition”, while Ohad Ben Ami was in a “severe nutritional state”.
Of the prisoners freed from Israeli jails, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said seven required hospitalization, decrying “brutality” and mistreatment in jail.
Half way around the world in Bangkok on Sunday, five Thai farm workers held hostage by Hamas and freed in an earlier swap wept with joy as they returned home.
“You are back, I thought you were dead,” the grandfather of 33-year-old Watchara Sriaoun told him.
‘Fantasies’
On Saturday, Netanyahu ordered negotiators to return to Qatar, which helped mediate the truce, “to discuss technical details of the agreement”, his office said.
It added that on his return to Israel from the United States where met Trump, Netanyahu will “hold a security cabinet meeting regarding negotiations for the second phase of the hostage release deal”.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim on Saturday warned that Israel’s “lack of commitment in implementing the first phase… exposes this agreement to danger and thus it may stop or collapse”.
Trump sparked global outrage by suggesting on Tuesday the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants.
Israel’s defense minister later ordered the army to prepare for “voluntary” departures from Gaza.
Trump has ruled out sending in American troops, and in an interview with Fox News aired Saturday, Netanyahu said Israel was willing to “do the job”.
Egypt will host an Arab summit on February 27 to discuss “the latest serious developments” concerning the Palestinian territories, its foreign ministry said Sunday.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty was heading to Washington for talks, and Jordan’s King Abdullah II was due to meet Trump at the White House on February 11.
Netanyahu praises Trump’s ‘revolutionary, creative’ Gaza plan
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday praised a proposal from President Donald Trump for US control of Gaza and the displacement of its population as “revolutionary”, striking a triumphant tone in a statement to his cabinet following his return to Israel from Washington.
Trump set out a plan earlier this week to move the Gazans out of the territory to other countries in the region, while the United States would take charge of redeveloping it, sparking a diplomatic backlash.
Meanwhile, in Gaza, Palestinians were on Sunday able to cross the Netzarim Corridor, a strategic zone cutting the narrow territory in two, after Israeli troops were said to have withdrawn.
“Israeli forces have dismantled their positions… and completely withdrawn their tanks from the Netzarim Corridor on Salaheddin Road, allowing vehicles to pass freely in both directions,” said an official from the Hamas-run interior ministry.
AFP journalists saw no troops in the area, as cars, buses, pickup trucks and donkey carts travelled north and south along the road.
Gaza resident Mahmoud al-Sarhi said “arriving at the Netzarim Corridor meant death until this morning”.
This is “the first time I saw our destroyed house”, he told AFP of his home in the nearby Zeitun area.
“The entire area is in ruins. I cannot live here.”
A senior Hamas official said the Israeli withdrawal from Netzarim had been scheduled for Sunday under the terms of the truce that took effect on January 19.
‘Unacceptable’
Trump sparked global outrage by suggesting on Tuesday the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants.
Upon his return to Israel from the United States, Netanyahu reiterated his support for the proposal during a cabinet meeting.
“President Trump came with a completely different, much better vision for Israel — a revolutionary, creative approach that we are currently discussing,” the Israeli prime minister said.
“He is very determined to implement it, and I believe it opens up many, many possibilities for us,” he added.
Israel’s defense minister earlier in the week ordered the army to prepare for “voluntary” departures from Gaza.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday became the latest world leaders to denounce Trump’s plan.
“No one has the power to remove the people of Gaza from their eternal homeland,” Erdogan told journalists at Istanbul airport before flying to Malaysia.
“Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem belong to the Palestinians.”
Scholz, speaking during a pre-election debate, described Trump’s plan as “a scandal”, adding: “The relocation of a population is unacceptable and against international law.”
