President Donald Trump (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
President Trump calls Gaza Strip ‘a real mess,’ hopes to find Arab state to take in 1.5 million Gazans during Gaza’s reconstruction.
By World Israel News Staff
President Donald Trump is pressuring Cairo and Amman to take in large numbers of refugees from the Gaza Strip, suggesting the move could be either temporary or permanent.
Speaking with reporters onboard Air Force One on Saturday, the president called the war-torn coastal enclave “a real mess,” and said he expected Jordan and Egypt taking in the bulk of the Gaza Strip’s population of 2.2 million people.
Discussing his phone call with Jordanian King Abdullah II on Saturday, Trump said he hopes the monarch will “take people” into his kingdom.
“I said to him ‘I’d love you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess’. I’d like him to take people.”
Trump also alluded to his upcoming call with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi slated for Sunday, saying he has a similar message for Cairo, with the hopes of securing refuge for some 1.5 million Gazans.
“I’d like Egypt to take people,” Trump told reporters. “You’re talking about a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know it’s, over.’”
“Something has to happen. It’s literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump continued.
Trump added that he hoped to see Arab states be actively involved in providing a solution for Gazans, so that they “could live in peace for a change.”
When asked be reporters whether he expected Jordan and Egypt to house the refugees temporarily or long term, Trump said “it could be either.”
It “could be temporary or long term,” Trump said.
Last week, NBC News reported that the Trump administration is mulling plans to encourage a third-party state, possibly Indonesia, to temporarily take in large numbers of Gazans during Gaza’s reconstruction.
Jakarta responded negatively to the report, saying that any such move would be “entirely unacceptable.”
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