Forced displacement of residents would be a war crime.

Hassan Jabareen, the director of Palestinian rights group Adalah, said:
“To ‘clean’ Gaza immediately after the war would in fact be a continuation of the war, through the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,”

Omer Shatz, a lecturer in international law at Sciences Po Paris and International Criminal Court (ICC) counsel, said:
Trump’s comments were a “call for ethnic cleansing” that echoed calls from extremist Israeli politicians and public figures dating to the start of the war.

Hamas officials rejected Trump’s suggestion, saying:
People who survived the war would not leave during peacetime, as did stranded Palestinians on the roads leading to north Gaza.

Magdy Seidam said:
1. “If he thinks he will forcibly displace the Palestinian people [then] this is impossible, impossible, impossible,”
2. “The Palestinian people firmly believe that this land is theirs, this soil is their soil.”


The Palestinian news agency Ma’an reported, Mustafa Barghouti, a senior Palestinian politician, saying:
He “completely rejected” Trump’s comments.

Barghouti warned against attempts at “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza, saying:
“The Palestinian people are committed to remaining in their homeland.”

Gaza’s population before the war was 2.3 million. Jordan, and Egypt have both made clear they will not take refugees from Gaza.

On Sunday, the Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said:
his country’s rejection of any displacement of Palestinians was “firm and unwavering”.

The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) civil advocacy rights group said:
Trump’s suggestion was “delusional and dangerous nonsense” in a statement that also described it as a proposal for ethnic cleansing.