Days after the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, former US President Donald Trump floated a plan to ‘clean out’ the Gaza Strip. Trump proposed that Arab nations, especially Jordan and Egypt, should absorb Palestinian refugees, a plan he discussed in calls with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi. “I’d like him to take people. I’d like Egypt to take people,” Trump said, noting that this could be up to a million and a half refugees, as he described Gaza as being “over” and “a mess.”
Trump praised Jordan for taking Palestinian refugees already and proposed that Egypt should do the same since the region had been over time characterised by conflicts. He said that the area currently resembled ‘a demolition site’, given that almost everything was destroyed, and there were deaths going on. “Something has to happen,” he said, further proposing that Arab nations build their houses somewhere else where people could live peacefully.
This came after Trump declared that he was going to end the blockade set by his predecessor on the shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump revealed that weapons that Israel had ordered but were not shipped during the tenure of President Biden were being shipped, among them the heavy bombs.
The same day, Israel and Hamas exchanged their second hostage-prisoner swap since the ceasefire began. Hamas returned four Israeli women hostages.