UN President Donald Trump’s idea of mass expulsion of Palestinians in Gaza to Jordan and Egypt has been dismissed by analysts as unaccepable “ethnic cleansing” and rejected by the governments of both neigbouring countries.

Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani, a nonresident research fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs and commentator specialising in Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict, said the US and Israel would “fail” over such a plan.

President Trump’s suggestion had been to “clean out” Gaza and move 1.5 million Palestinians to Jordan and Egypt.

“Even if [President Trump] applies pressure on Jordan and Egypt, I think their leaderships will recognise the price of going along with Trump is going to be much greater than the price of resisting him — in terms of the survival of their leaderships for participating in something like this,” Rabbani told Al Jazeera, referring to Trump’s plan as “ethnic cleansing”.

The rebuttals to the Trump idea came as Gaza experienced an historic day with jubilant scenes as tens of thousands of Palestinians crossed the so-called Netzarim Corridor to return home in the north showing their determination to survive under the 15-month onslaught by Israel’s military.

Al Jazeera journalist Tamer al-Misshal said it was a “significant and historic moment” for the Palestinians.

“It’s the first time since 1948 those who have been forced out of their homes and land managed to get back — despite the destruction and despite the genocide,” he said.

He quoted one Palestinian man who returned as saying he would erect a tent on his destroyed home, “which is much better than being forcibly displaced from Gaza”.

Al-Misshal noted Hamas recently said 18 more Israeli captives were alive and would be returned each Saturday in exchange for Palestinian prisoners over the next few weeks.

He said the next main step was to get the Rafah land crossing opened so aid could flow and thousands of badly wounded Palestinians could get medical treatment abroad.

‘Blanket refusal’

Analyst Mouin Rabbani told Al Jazeera about the Trump displacement idea: “This isn’t going to happen because Israel is not going to succeed in ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip after a war, after having failed to do so during a war.”

When former US Secretary of State Antony Blinken went on a tour of Arab states to promote this idea late last year, he had been met with a “blanket refusal”, Rabbani added.

Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was feeling the heat from his coalition partners over the ceasefire deal who view the Israeli leader as succumbing to US demands, the analyst said.

“I think there’s a kind of a mix of personal, political and ideological factors at play,” Rabbani said.

“But ultimately, I think the key relationship to look at here is not that between Netanyahu and his coalition partners, or between Israelis and Palestinians, but between Washington and Israel — because Washington is the one calling the shots, and Israel has no choice but to comply.”

A senior Hamas official, Basem Naim, has described the “return” day as “the most important day in the current history of this conflict”.

He said that Israel was “for the first time” obliged to allow Palestinians to return to their houses after being forced “by the resistance”, in a similar way that it was “forced to release” Palestinian prisoners.

‘Very symbolic day’ in conflict
“This is, I think, a very symbolic day,” he said. “This is a very important day in how to approach this conflict with the Israelis, which language they understand.”

Naim also reaffirmed Hamas’s commitment to the ceasefire agreement and said the group was “ready to do the maximum to give this deal a chance to succeed”.

He also accused Netanyahu and the Israeli government of playing “dirty games” in a bid to “sabotage the deal”.

Jordanian officials have rejected President Trump’s “clean out” Gaza suggestion with
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi saying that all talk about an alternative homeland for the Palestinians was rejected and “we will not accept it”.

He said any attempt to displace Palestinians from their land would not bring security to the region.

The Jordanian House of Representatives said: “The absurdity and denial of Palestinian rights will keep the region on a simmering and boiling plate.”

Jordan would not be an alternative homeland for displacement attempts against “the patient Palestinian people”.

In Cairo, the Foreign Ministry reaffirmed in a statement Egypt’s “continued support for the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on their land.”

It “rejected any infringement on those inalienable rights, whether by settlement or annexation of land, or by the depopulation of that land of its people through displacement, encouraged transfer or the uprooting of Palestinians from their land, whether temporarily or long-term.”

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As Israel presses ahead with strikes in Rafah and seizing the Rafah crossing from Egypt, aid agencies are sounding the alarm of a “catastrophic humanitarian situation”.

Rafah was “significant” because it was the only part in Gaza that had not been terribly damaged by the conflict, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) senior deputy director Scott Anderson told RNZ Checkpoint.

“Most of the infrastructure is intact,” he said.

“And most importantly, we have 1.4 million of the 2.2 million people in Gaza sheltering here in Rafah. And of that number, more than half are children,” Anderson told Checkpoint.

“It’s the last place of safety within Gaza.”

He said people struggled daily to find food, water, showers and toilets.

Palestinians have now been ordered to evacuate parts of Rafah as Israel prepares for a long-threatened assault on Hamas holdouts in the city.

People displaced five times
Many of the people had already been displaced five or six times, Anderson said.

“And now come the evacuation orders and it makes people very nervous and apprehensive.

“For us it is a concern because Rafah is also where our main supply line for Gaza exists through Kerem Shalom from Israel, or through Rafah Gate from Egypt.”

He said it would affect aid reaching Rafah.

In the north of Gaza, only 30 to 50 trucks could enter a day, whereas Kerem Shalom in the south could accommodate up to 600 trucks.

The Rafah terminal from Egypt was a path for fuel and diesel to come in.

“If we don’t have diesel, we don’t have hospitals running, we don’t have food being delivered, water is not being produced, waste isn’t being picked up, and the sewers aren’t running.

“So those two crossings very much are the lifeline of Gaza, and without those, it could become very much a catastrophic humanitarian situation beyond what already exists.”

Palestinian militant group Hamas has agreed to a Gaza ceasefire proposal from mediators, but Israel said the terms did not meet its demands.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

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