Trump confirms no return for Gaza's ethnically cleansed Palestinians

US President Donald Trump has said Palestinians will have no right of return to Gaza under his controversial plan to occupy Gaza, describing his proposal in excerpts of an interview released on 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 and others in the international community have vehemently 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 enclave, most of which has been reduced to rubble by Israel's genocidal war since October 2023.

"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 Muslim world and beyond.

The US president pressed his case for Palestinians to be uprooted from Gaza, devastated by the Israel, and for Egypt and Jordan to take them.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty flew to Washington in the wake of Trump's remarks. He met at the State Department on Monday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, with neither speaking to the media.

Jordan's King Abdullah II was set to hold talks with Trump on Tuesday.

In the Fox interview — which will be broadcast on Monday after the first half was screened a day earlier — 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."

'Unacceptable'

Trump stunned the world when he announced out of the blue last week that the United States would "take over the Gaza Strip," remove rubble and unexploded bombs and turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East."

But while he initially said that Palestinians could be among the "world people" allowed to live there, he has since appeared to harden his position to suggest that they could not.

Netanyahu on Sunday praised Trump's proposal as "revolutionary", striking a triumphant tone in a statement to his cabinet following his return from Washington.

"President Trump came with a completely different, much better vision for Israel," said Netanyahu, who was reportedly only briefed on the plan shortly before Trump's announcement.

The reaction from much of the rest of the world has been one of outrage, with Egypt, Jordan, other Arab nations and the Palestinians all rejecting it out of hand.

The criticism was not limited to the Arab world, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying on Sunday, "No one has the power to remove people of Gaza from their eternal homeland, which has existed for thousands of years. Palestine, including Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, belongs to the Palestinians."

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz labelled the plan "a scandal," adding that the forced relocation of Palestinians would be "unacceptable and against international law."

Trump's plan has also threatened to disrupt the fragile six-week ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and the chances of it progressing to a second, more permanent phase. On Monday, Hamas said Israel was not serious about executing the deal and announced it would stop releasing prisoners until further notice.

Hamas negotiators said US guarantees for the ceasefire were no longer in place given a plan by Trump to displace Palestinians from Gaza.

Trump, however, repeated his insistence that he could persuade Egypt and Jordan, both major recipients of US military aid, to come around.

"I think I could make a deal with Jordan. I think I could make a deal with Egypt. You know, we give them billions and billions of dollars a year," he told Fox.

Last year, Trump described Gaza as being "like Monaco," while his son-in-law Jared Kushner suggested that Israel could clear Gaza of civilians to unlock "waterfront property.

'Relocate Israelis to Alaska and Greenland'

Netanyahu has added to the Arab fury, suggesting that Palestinians should establish their state in Saudi Arabia rather than in their own homeland.

"The Saudis can create a Palestinian state in Saudi Arabia; they have a lot of land over there," Netanyahu said on Thursday during an interview with Israeli Channel 14 disregarding the long-standing Palestinian demands for self-determination.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry immediately stressed its "categorical rejection of such statements that aim to divert attention from the continuous crimes committed by the Israeli occupation against the Palestinian brothers in Gaza".

It followed remarks by a member of the Saudi Shura Council who suggested that relocating Israelis to Alaska and Greenland would be a better solution to Middle East stability.

"If he (Trump) truly wants to be a hero of peace and achieve stability and prosperity for the Middle East, he should relocate his beloved Israelis to the state of Alaska and then to Greenland — after annexing it," Shura Council member Yousef bin Trad Al-Saadoun said in an article for the Saudi newspaper Okaz on Friday.

He urged Palestinians to remain united, as "the worst is yet to come."

“The Zionists and their allies must realise they will not succeed in dragging the Saudi leadership into media traps and false political pressures," Saadoun added.