Hamas slams Donald Trump's idea of relocating Palestinians

Hamas reacted with fury and defiance to a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to “clean out” Gaza, where a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas aimed at permanently ending the war enters its second week.

“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, adding that he expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday.

Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, in his reaction said Palestinians would “foil such projects” as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.

Gazans, he said, “will not accept any offers or solutions, even if their apparent intentions are good under the banner of reconstruction, as proposed by US President Trump.”

Hamas leader called Trump’s idea “deplorable” and said that it encourages “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.

Baseem Naim said, that Palestinians demand an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital.

A total of seven hostages and 289 Palestinians have so far been freed, as well as one Jordanian prisoner freed by Israel.

The truce has brought a surge of food, fuel, medicines and other aid into rubble-strewn Gaza, but the UN says “the humanitarian situation remains dire”. Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war, 87 remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.