Palestinians will not be guaranteed a right to return to Gaza under President Donald Trump’s reconstruction plan.
Fox News’s Bret Baier directly asked the president about the matter in a Saturday interview that aired on Monday.
“No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing,” Trump said. “Much better.”
He continued, “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. It would be years before it could happen.”
The Trump administration has characterized its plan as a massive land development project aimed at turning the bombed-out, scorched wastelands of Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Under the proposal, the United States would take “long-term ownership” of the region and vacate the majority of residents in order to facilitate the massive infrastructure project.
“Think of it as a big real estate site, and the United States is going to own it,” Trump told reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One. “There won’t be anybody there. Hamas won’t be there.”
Hamas leadership is unwilling to entertain Trump’s proposal, threatening to violently oppose such a takeover.
Kahlil al Hayya, a member of the Hamas politburo and an acting leader of the terrorist group, called the plans for U.S. occupation “doomed” during a 46th-anniversary celebration of the Iranian revolution on Monday in Tehran.
“We will bring them down as we brought down the projects before them,” he warned during his speech.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas spokesman, said last week that Trump’s remarks are “ridiculous and absurd” and “capable of igniting the region.”
He added that Hamas considers the proposal “a recipe for generating chaos and tension in the region because the people of Gaza will not allow such plans to pass.”
The establishment of an autonomous, sovereign Palestinian state remains a nonnegotiable demand for key Middle Eastern powers including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates.
These nations see any operation that would remove Palestinians from their land as inherently antithetical to the two-state solution and a profound threat to regional peace.
One of Trump’s only supporters for his plan is the Israeli government — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called it a “revolutionary, creative vision.”
“I am not exaggerating,” the prime minister said at a Cabinet meeting. “There are opportunities here for possibilities that I think we never dreamed of, or at least until a few months ago, they did not seem possible, but they are possible.”
Many Trump allies remain convinced that the threat of U.S. occupation is intended to jostle Middle Eastern nations into finding a more immediate and agreeable solution.
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“The fact that nobody has a realistic solution and [President Trump] puts some very bold, fresh, new ideas on the table, I don’t think should be criticized in any way,” national security adviser Mike Waltz said. “I think [Trump’s plan] is going to bring the entire region to come [up] with their own solutions.”
The Trump administration has alluded to the idea that a full reconstruction of the region could take 10-15 years to complete.