GAZA CITY – Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad reacted with defiance on Sunday (26) to a plan floated by US President Donald Trump to “clean out” Gaza, as a fragile truce aimed at permanently ending the war entered its second week.

There was no immediate reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but a far-right minister welcomed Trump’s “great” idea.

Meanwhile, a dispute linked to the latest hostage-prisoner swap under the truce deal led to vast crowds of Palestinians jamming a coastal road after they were blocked from returning to the territory’s north.

The swap saw four Israeli women hostages, all soldiers, and 200 Palestinian prisoners released on Saturday (25) to joyful scenes, in the second such exchange so far.

After 15 months of war, Trump said Gaza had become a “demolition site”, adding he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory.

“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters, adding he expected to talk to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday (26).

Most Gazans are Palestinian refugees or their descendants.

For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark historical memories of what the Arab world calls the ‘Nakba’ or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation 75 years ago.

Egypt has previously warned against any “forced displacement” of Palestinians from Gaza into the Sinai desert, which Sisi said could jeopardize the peace treaty Egypt signed with Israel in 1979.

Jordan is already home to around 2.3 million registered Palestinian refugees, according to the United Nations.

“You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump said of Gaza, whose population is about 2.4 million.

“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said, adding that moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be done “temporarily or could be long term”.

– ‘Deplorable’ –

Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, told AFP that 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.”

Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable” and said it encouraged “war crimes and crimes against humanity by forcing our people to leave their land”.

But far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed the Gaza truce deal, said Trump’s suggestion of “helping them find other places to start a better life is a great idea”.

He added: “Only out-of-the-box thinking with new solutions will bring a solution of peace and security.”

Almost all Gazans have been displaced by the war that began after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

The United Nations says close to 70% of the territory’s buildings are damaged or destroyed.

– Waiting to enter –

On Sunday, cars and carts loaded with belongings jammed a road near the Netzarim Corridor that Israel has blocked, preventing the expected return of hundreds of thousands of people to northern Gaza.

Aerial footage showed the crowd stretching hundreds of metres in three directions, with Gaza’s civil defence agency saying “tens of thousands” were waiting in the area to go north.

Israel announced on Saturday it would prevent Palestinians’ passage to the north until the release of Arbel Yehud, a civilian woman hostage who Netanyahu’s office said “was supposed to be released”.

On Sunday, Netanyahu’s office said that by not releasing her on Saturday Hamas had committed a truce violation. It said they had also violated the deal by not providing a “detailed list of all hostages’ statuses”, the office said.

Hamas later said that blocking returns to the north also amounted to a truce violation, adding it had provided “all the necessary guarantees” for Yehud’s release.

Israel has also reached a ceasefire with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the health ministry and army on Sunday said Israeli troops killed three residents and a Lebanese soldier as hundreds of people tried to return to their homes on the deadline for Israeli forces to withdraw from the area.

During the first phase of the Gaza truce, 33 hostages should be freed in staggered releases over six weeks in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

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, 87 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 47,283 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

– Agence France-Presse