Israel said Thursday that it had started preparations for the departure of a large number of Gaza Strip in accordance with President Donald Trump’s plan for the territory. Meanwhile, officials said that Egypt launched a diplomatic blitz behind the scenes to try to leave the plan.
The Trump administration has already informed the aspects of the proposal after being widely rejected internationally, saying that the relocation of the Palestinians would be temporary. US officials have provided little details on how the plan is made.
In an article on social networks on Thursday, Trump said that Israel would return Gaza to the United States after the conflict and that no American soldier would be necessary for his plan to the redevelopment.
The Palestinians vehemently rejected Trump’s proposal, fearing that Israel never allows refugees to return. Egypt warned that an expulsion of the Palestinians would destabilize the region and undermine its peace treaty with Israel, a cornerstone of American stability and influence for decades.
Saudi Arabia, another ally of the United States, has also rejected any mass transfer of Palestinians and says that it will not normalize relations with Israel – a key objective of the Trump administration – without the creation of a Palestinian state which includes Gaza.
Trump and Israeli officials described the proposed resettlement of Gaza, ravaged by conflicts, as a volunteer, but the Palestinians have universally expressed their determination to stay in their country of origin.
Trump and Israeli officials did not say how they would react if the Palestinians refuse to leave. But Human Rights Watch and other groups say that the plan, if it was implemented, would be equivalent to “ethnic cleaning”, the forced relocation of the civilian population of an ethnic group of a geographic area.
The Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that he had ordered soldiers to prepare to facilitate the emigration of a large number of Gaza Palestinians through land as well as “special provisions for exit by sea and in the air ”.
There was no immediate sign of such preparations on the ground.
Egypt puts a countryside behind the scenes
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi did not publicly respond to Trump’s superb proposal that most of the population of 2.3 million Gaza Palestinians is moved and that the United States takes care of reconstruction of the territory. The 15-month-old campaign of Israel against the Hamas militant group had reduced large parts of Gaza in rubble before a fragile ceasefire settled last month.
But Egyptian officials, speaking on Wednesday under the guise of anonymity to discuss the talks in camera, said that Cairo had clearly told the Trump administration and to Israel that it would resist any proposal and that the agreement Peace with Israel – which has been raised for almost half a century – is at risk.
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An official said that the message had been sent to the Pentagon, the State Department and the members of the US Congress. A second official said that he had also been transmitted to Israel and his allies in Western Europe, notably Great Britain, France and Germany.
A Western diplomat in Cairo, who is also anonymously speaking because the discussions have not been made public, confirmed that he received the message from Egypt on several channels. The diplomat said that Egypt was very serious and considered the plan to be a threat to its national security.
The diplomat said that Egypt rejected similar proposals from the Biden administration and European countries at the start of the conflict, which was launched by the attack on Hamas on October 7, 2023 in southern Israel. The previous proposals were discussed in private, while Trump announced his plan at a press conference in the White House alongside the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
US officials reduce Trump’s proposal
Trump said he wanted to “definitively” reinstall the major part of the Gaza population in other countries and for the United States to take charge of the debris and the reconstruction of Gaza as “Riviera du Middle East ”for everyone. There is no excluded the deployment of American troops.
Later, American officials seemed to come back, saying that the relocation of the Palestinians would be temporary and that Trump had not committed to putting American boots on the ground or spending American taxes in Gaza.
Egyptian officials said that their government did not think that Palestinians must be relocated for reconstruction to continue and are involved in the creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories that Israel seized in the war of the Middle East of 1967.
The Israeli government is opposed to the Palestinian state and said it would maintain control of the safety open to Gaza and occupied West Bank. Israel annexed Jerusalem-Est in a decision not recognized by most of the international community and considers the whole city of its capital.
Last week, Egypt organized a meeting of the best diplomats from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates – which was the engine of Abraham in 2020 that Trump negotiated with Israel. The five Arab nations have rejected the transfer of Gaza Palestinians or the West Bank.
In an editorial on Thursday, the main daily newspaper of the state of state of Egypt, al-Ahram, warned that “the independence of the Arab countries, the unity of their peoples and their territorial integrity were seriously threatened”.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press
