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. ..........
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