President Trump in a new interview said Palestinians would not have the right to return to the Gaza Strip if it is taken over and developed by the United States, as he has proposed.
“No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing. Much better,” Trump told Fox News’s Bret Baier in an interview conducted Saturday and aired Monday.
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“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 continued. “It would be years before it could happen.”
Trump asserted he could “make a deal” with Jordan and Egypt to have them take in Palestinians displaced out of Gaza, though leaders of those countries and other Arab nations have rejected the idea.
Trump is set to welcome King Abdullah II of Jordan on Tuesday to the White House, where the Gaza proposal is expected to be a major point of discussion.
The president last week during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first proposed the United States would take over the Gaza Strip and develop it. He has since said U.S. troops would not be involved in securing the area.
Trump on Sunday called Gaza “a demolition site.”
The president’s controversial proposal stands to upend decades of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Arab leaders in the region, including some allies, have dismissed Trump’s proposal.
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Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian National Authority, said Trump’s comments “represent a serious violation of international law.”
Saudi Arabia reiterated its “absolute rejection of infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, annexation of Palestinian lands or efforts to displace the Palestinian people from their land.”
Republicans appeared skeptical of the proposal, even as some welcomed it as an unorthodox solution to a long-standing problem.
