Michael Hernandez
10 February 2025•Update: 10 February 2025
WASHINGTON
US President Donald Trump said in comments aired Monday that Palestinians who leave the besieged Gaza Strip under his widely panned ownership plan for the coastal enclave will not be allowed to return.
"We'll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is. 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," Trump said during an interview with Fox News.
Asked directly by the interviewer if Palestinians would "have the right to return," Trump said flatly, "No, they wouldn't, because they're going to have much better housing."
"In other words, I'm talking about building a permanent place for them, because if they have to return now, it will be years before you could ever... it's not habitable. It will be years before it could happen. I'm talking about starting to build and 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 added.
Trump rolled out his proposal in the midst of an ongoing ceasefire that has halted Israel's war on Gaza after 15 months. His plan to take ownership of Gaza has been roundly rejected on the world stage, but Trump has insisted that he will see it through, repeatedly claiming he can force Egypt and Jordan to settle Palestinian refugees -- claims they have publicly rebuffed, as have the Palestinians.
Jordan's King Abdullah is slated to visit the White House this week.
Trump's plan shares strong similarities to one publicly put forward by his son-in-law Jared Kushner in March 2024, when the president's one-time advisor lauded the Palestinian territory's “very valuable” Mediterranean property.
"Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable if people would focus on building up livelihoods," Kushner said during an interview at Harvard University. "It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up."
Israel’s war on Gaza has left the besieged enclave in ruins, with half of its housing damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million people displaced amid severe shortages of sanitation, medical supplies, food, and clean water. Over 47,000 people have been killed.
In November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, citing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Separately, Israel faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
