Trump says 'nobody is expelling Palestinians,' weeks after saying they should be moved to Arab states

[Eugene]

Source: CNN

Trump says ‘nobody is expelling Palestinians,’ weeks after saying they should be moved to Arab states

By Rob Picheta, Ibrahim Dahman and Kareem El Damanhoury, CNN
3 minute read
Updated 10:51 PM EDT, Thu March 13, 2025

(CNN) — US President Donald Trump’s plans for the future of Gaza were further shrouded in confusion on Wednesday when he told reporters that “nobody is expelling any Palestinians” from the enclave – an apparent climbdown from his previous proclamations that its population should be relocated.

Trump has repeatedly offered conflicting visions for Gaza’s future. He said in recent weeks that its 2.1 million Palestinians should be moved to Arab states like Egypt and Jordan following Israel’s war with Hamas, controversially proposing that the US take control of the Strip and turn it into a Middle Eastern “Riviera.”

“We’re moving them to a beautiful location where they have new homes, where they can live safely, where they’ll have doctors and medical and all of those things,” he said during a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan last month. “And I think it’s going to be great.”

But during a Wednesday meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, Trump responded to a reporter’s question about his plan by saying: “Nobody’s expelling any Palestinians.”

-snip-

Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/13/middleeast/trump-gaza-relocation-comments-intl/index.html

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Earlier DU thread: U.S. and Israel want Palestinians resettled in Sudan, Somalia and Somaliland

[some_of_us_are_sane]

1. Trump talks out of his ass so much

THAT is why his tiny, puckered mouth looks like an anus.

[riversedge]

2. CBS: U.S., Israel interested in Sudan, Somalia and Syria for resettlement of Gazans, sources say

U.S., Israel interested in Sudan, Somalia and Syria for resettlement of Gazans, sources say

By Camilla Schick, Margaret Brennan

Updated on: March 16, 2025 / 5:24 PM EDT / CBS News

The Trump administration and Israel approached the governments of Sudan and Somalia, and have also been interested in Syria, as potential places to resettle Palestinians from Gaza, according to three sources familiar with the effort.

The idea of Palestinian resettlement in another country is one of several options the Trump team is chewing over as part of the U.S. president's larger goal of ending Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza and rebuilding the devastated Palestinian enclave.



...............Since his Feb. 4 news conference, Mr. Trump has suggested Palestinians would have a choice on whether to leave but also indicated that their departure from Gaza could be permanent. In a Fox News interview several days later he said, "We'll build beautiful communities, safe communities, could be five, six, could be two. But we'll build safe communities a little bit away from where they (the Palestinians) are." In the same interview, he said that Palestinians wouldn't have the right to return to Gaza under his plan because the enclave "is not habitable" and won't be for years to come.

The United Nations reported in January that over 90% of housing units in Gaza are either damaged or destroyed and 1.9 million Gazan civilians have been displaced. Gaza's health ministry says more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war between Israel and Hamas, which began after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in which Hamas killed more than 1,000 Israelis and took roughly 100 more hostage.

Multiple Arab governments, the United Nations and some Democratic lawmakers, quickly denounced Mr. Trump's idea of emptying out Gaza with some defining the idea as ethnic cleansing. Instead, Arab leaders endorsed an alternative Egyptian post-war construction plan for Gaza last week, but the Trump administration and Israel were both quick to reject it, again citing that the Gaza Strip is uninhabitable. ..........