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President Donald Trump’s plans for the US to take over Gaza have been met with anger and dismay across the Arab world, and raised fears of reigniting conflict in the region.
The US president on Tuesday evening said the US should “take over” the devastated Gaza Strip, swaths of which are in ruins after more than a year of war with Israel, and that the 2.2mn Palestinian population should be resettled.
Palestinian leaders on Wednesday said they would defy any attempts to remove them from their land.
A senior leader in Islamist militant group and Gaza’s ruling power Hamas, Sami Abu Zuhri, said the people of Gaza “would not allow these plans to pass”, and called Trump’s comments a “recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region”.
Hussein al-Sheikh, secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said the Palestinian leadership remained committed to a two-state solution and “affirms its rejection of all calls for the displacement of the Palestinian people from their homeland”.
The PLO is linked to the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank and is seen by international diplomats as having a potential role in governing postwar Gaza.
Arab states have long rejected any further expulsion of Palestinians. The exodus of Palestinians during the creation of the Jewish state in 1948, known to Palestinians as the Nakba or catastrophe, created waves of displacement into neighbouring countries and triggered years of instability in the region.
Neighbouring Jordan and Egypt, which have yet to respond to Trump’s comments, had previously rebuffed Trump’s suggestion that they should accept displaced Palestinian refugees.
Trump’s intention to secure Gaza with American soldiers will also resurface memories of the disastrous US invasion and occupation of Iraq, which further destabilised the region and sullied America’s reputation in the Arab world.
Trump’s intervention also threatens to undermine his aim of doing more to normalise relations between Israel and Arab states in the region.
Saudi Arabia, seen as Trump’s closest ally in the oil-rich Gulf region, on Wednesday rejected the displacement of Palestinians and said it would not hold peace talks with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state was created.
After successfully brokering normalisation talks between Israel and Gulf states the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain during his first term, Trump was widely expected to pursue a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
But Israel’s war on Gaza, triggered by Hamas in October 2023, hardened Riyadh’s attitude towards Israel and has seen it renew a commitment towards an independent Palestinian state.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto leader Mohammed bin Salman has previously labelled Israel’s ferocious assault — which has killed about 47,000 people in Gaza — as a “genocide”.
The kingdom’s foreign ministry said Saudi Arabia “will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel” without an independent Palestinian state and stressed that this position was “non-negotiable and not subject to compromises”.
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