Hamas came out against Trump’s proposal to “cleanse” the Gaza Strip and anticipated that it will make it fail

The Palestinian movement Hamas and its allied group Islamic Jihad denounced on Sunday US President Donald Trump’s proposal to “cleanse” the Gaza Strip, where a fragile truce is entering its second week, and to transfer its inhabitants to Egypt and Jordan.

A far-right minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government, Bezalel Smotrich, said it was an “excellent idea” and that Palestinians could “establish new, good lives elsewhere.”

After more than 15 months of war in Gaza, a fragile ceasefire began on January 19.

Israel and Hamas accused each other on Sunday of violating the agreement, a day after the exchange of four female Israeli soldiers for some 200 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Trump compared the war-torn Gaza Strip, mired in a serious humanitarian crisis, to a “demolition site” and said he had spoken with King Abdullah II of Jordan about the situation. He also said he will speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al Sisi.

“We are talking about a million and a half people, and We’ll just clean all that up.. You know, over the centuries there have been many, many conflicts there and, I don’t know, something has to happen,” Trump said Saturday aboard Air Force One.

“I would like Egypt to take people and I would like Jordan to take people,” he added, suggesting a displacement of Gazans that could be “temporary or long-term.”

But according to Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political office, the Palestinians “will derail” the US proposal “as they have already derailed all displacement projects (…) for decades.”

The Islamic Jihad, another armed movement in Gaza allied with Hamas, considered that Trump’s statements encourage “war crimes and crimes against humanity” in Gazawhere the vast majority of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by war, often multiple times.

Trump also announced that he will authorize the delivery of 900 kilo bombs to Israela measure that his predecessor Joe Biden had suspended.

“The region is safer when Israel has what it needs to defend itself,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Sunday.

Trump pressured the warring parties to conclude the ceasefire agreement that came into effect last Sunday, with a first exchange of three Israeli hostages for 90 Palestinian prisoners.

The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 left 1.210 muertos on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data.

A total of 251 people were kidnapped that day. Of them, 87 are still held hostage, of which 34 have died, according to the army.

The offensive launched in retaliation by Israel in the besieged Gaza Strip has left at least 47.283 muertosthe majority civilians, according to data from the Hamas Ministry of Health.

The first phase of the ceasefire agreement should last six weeks and will allow the release of a total of 33 hostages against some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners.

In this first phase, it is planned to negotiate the modalities of the second, which should allow the release of the last hostages, before the last stage that should begin the process of reconstruction of Gaza and the return of the bodies of the hostages who died in captivity. .

On Saturday, a last-minute disagreement prevented hundreds of thousands of residents from beginning to return to northern Gaza as planned.

Israel justified its refusal to let them pass by accusing Hamas of two violations of the agreement: the failure to release Arbel Yehuda, a civilian, and the fact that Hamas had not provided a list of the status of the hostages, alive or dead.

Hamas claims that Yehuda is alive and that it is Israel’s “pretext” for not complying. “Hamas holds Israel responsible for the delay in the implementation of the agreement,” the Islamist group said in a statement.