Palestinians condemn Trump’s Gaza plan: ‘These remarks are hostile and will add fuel to the fire’
Ordinary Gazans, along with officials from Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, are determined to continue defending their rights and resist being expelled from their land, as proposed by the US president
The fact that hundreds of thousands of Gazans have returned to the ruins of their homes and streets in the devastated northern Gaza — following the ceasefire after nearly 16 months of war — offers a clear insight into the resilience that drives them. From one generation to the next, they inherit a deep-rooted connection to a land from which they are once again being pushed to leave. This happened in 1948 when Israel was established, and it has continued with various Israeli governments, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
This explains the widespread rejection of the plan presented by U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday to expel the population and leave Gaza under Israeli control. This opposition is shared by ordinary citizens and official bodies alike, including the Hamas government in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, the West Bank capital.
Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and was responsible for the massacre of around 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, 2023, strongly condemned Trump’s announcement that the U.S. to “will take over the Gaza Strip.”
“We strongly condemn and reject President Trump’s statements, which aim to forcibly remove our people from their land,” Hamas said in a press statement
The group demands that Trump retract his statement and calls for the protection of the Palestinian people by the Arab League and the United Nations. Hamas also emphasized that they will not allow any country to occupy their land or impose guardianship over the Palestinian people. “These remarks are hostile to our people and our cause, and will not serve stability in the region, and will only add fuel to the fire,” said the statement, with Hamas adding that it will “not allow any country in the world to occupy our land or impose guardianship over our great Palestinian people.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also rejected Trump’s proposal, calling it a “serious violation of international law.” He declared that Palestinians would not “give up their land, rights, and sacred sites” and that “the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the land of the State of Palestine, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem.” Abbas also expressed gratitude for the support from countries such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia in opposing the U.S. president’s plan for “displacement and annexation.”
José Vericat, senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, argues that the U.S. and Israel’s proposal to take control of Gaza “represents a paradigm shift that goes beyond mere annexation or ethnic cleansing.” While unsure of how such a plan could be executed — whether “on buses, on ferries,” or “treating them like transhumant cattle,” as he explains in a phone conversation from Madrid — he stresses that it “must be taken seriously,” even though “the Palestinian population has no intention of leaving.”
Vericat also highlights the “enormously destabilizing” potential of this plan for the region, particularly for Jordan and Egypt, both of which are reliant on the United States and could be forced to absorb the displaced Gazans. Vericat — who lived for two years in the Palestinian territory — concludes that the plan essentially aims to “wipe Gaza off the map,” which would carry immense rejection due to the indignity it would inflict on the Palestinian people and the rich history of Gaza.
Samir Zaqout, 58, an employee of the human rights organization Al Mezan, predicts that “no solution can be reached for Gaza or the Palestinians without a political solution. Displacing people again will not work. They will fail.”
In voice notes sent by telephone from the center of Gaza, where a ceasefire has been in effect since 19 January, he adds: “We have been living for 76 years [since Israel’s independence] under something that we can call genocide on a daily, weekly basis” and “no one is thinking of evacuating Gaza as a solution. If no one has talked about leaving in these 16 months of war, how can anyone think of such a solution, even if Jordan and Egypt agreed to it.” For him, “ethnic cleansing” is nothing new.
Riad Ali El Aila, a 72-year-old Spanish-Palestinian evacuated from Gaza at the beginning of the current war — which has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians — does not dare to set a date for his return, but he plans to try as soon as he’s allowed to rebuild what he was forced to leave behind. He explains this in a telephone conversation from the Spanish town of Pilas, where he lives with his family.
During the four years of Trump’s term, “I think that, as a businessman, he is going to change the world in his own way, as if the world were a big company for him,” says the retired professor. “Someone who has a lot of money and wants more. His thinking is economic and has nothing to do with politics, human rights, or the United Nations.” He believes that the U.S. president is doing this to strengthen Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and the most “right-wing” sector of his cabinet, which is in favor of recolonizing Gaza.
“For 15 months, Netanyahu and his fascist government have tried to displace the residents of the Gaza Strip and have failed to achieve this goal,” warns Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, in another statement. “What the occupation has failed to do, no American administration or power in the world will succeed in implementing.”
After meeting with Netanyahu in Washington on Tuesday, Trump announced plans not only to promote the deportation of 1.5 million residents abroad, as he mentioned last week, but also to take control of Gaza and transform it into a kind of holiday resort. However, neither he nor Netanyahu consider have taken into account the will of the Palestinian people or international law. Furthermore, no details have emerged on how this will be implemented, as no one has, so far, shown any willingness to cooperate.
“Trump is the second Balfour”
Contrary to the plans of Trump and Netanyahu, Palestinian refugees continue to demand their right to return to the places from which they were expelled during the 1948 war. Riad El Aila believes the Palestinian struggle didn’t start with Israel’s independence that year, but rather three decades earlier. In 1917, British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration, expressing the intent to establish a home for Jews in what was then Palestinian land. El Aila thus sees Trump as “the second Balfour.”
The Spanish-Palestinian professor underscores the resilience of his people over the decades: “Palestinians are used to resisting on their land, even under American bombs [since the U.S. is Israel’s main arms supplier]. They would not trade the destruction of Gaza for any other country in the region, nor even for the United States.” As Trump and Netanyahu finalize their plans and efforts to rebuild Gaza unfold, El Aila’s children continue their studies online from Pilas, Seville.
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