Trump Seems To Backtrack on Plan To Remove Palestinians From Gaza
US President Donald Trump appeared to reverse his stance on relocating Palestinians from Gaza, telling reporters Wednesday, “Nobody’s expelling any Palestinians.” His remark came during an Oval Office meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, during which a journalist asked Martin about Trump’s earlier proposal to remove the population from the territory.
President Trump’s comment contradicted statements he made last month at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he proposed a US-led takeover of Gaza. He proposed that Gaza could be turned into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” an idea that was later backed up by an AI-generated video shared on the president’s social media showing an idyllic Gaza with a massive gold tower of President Trump.
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During that announcement, he suggested that the enclave’s roughly 2 million residents would be permanently relocated. When asked whether Palestinians would be forcibly removed, President Trump insisted at the time that no one in Gaza actually wanted to stay.
The announcement of that plan resulted in immediate backlash from the Arab world and from many European states. In response to the Trump plan, Egypt proposed an alternative program for restoring Gaza without displacing its residents at an Arab summit in Cairo last week.
On Wednesday, Trump also took aim at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, saying, “Schumer is a Palestinian as far as I’m concerned. He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore, he’s Palestinian.”
