Gaza war: Trump wants Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians
Donald Trump has a long history of seemingly speaking off the cuff and floating ideas that never end up taking fruition.
However, the idea of encouraging Gazans to relocate to neighbouring countries has long been pushed by hardline right-wing members of Netanyahu's government.
The former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir from the Jewish Power party said he commended Trump "for the initiative to transfer residents from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt".
"One of our demands from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to promote voluntary emigration," he wrote on X.
The current Israeli finance minister, the far-right settler Bezelal Smotrich, has also said Palestinians should emigrate to neighbouring countries to allow Jewish settlements to be re-established in Gaza.
Such comments outrage Palestinians and will dismay proponents of a "two-state solution" - the establishment of an independent Palestinian State alongside Israel.
There are fears amongst Palestinians that those around President Trump are pushing him in a more extreme direction when it comes to policy in the Middle East.
This month, Trump's nominee to be the next US ambassador to Israel, the evangelical Christian Mike Huckabee, rejected the idea of there ever being a Palestinian state outright.
"The Palestinians had their chance in Gaza," he said in a US television interview.
"And look what happened there."
Gaza has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
Huckabee's comments contradict six decades of US policy in the Middle East during which Washington has long pushed the concept of a "two-state solution".
The US has previously said that it opposes any forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza or the occupied West Bank.
More than two million Palestinian refugees, most of whom have been granted citizenship, live in Jordan, according to the UN. They are descendants of some of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes in the conflicts surrounding the formation of Israel in 1948.
Thousands of Palestinians have fled to Egypt since the war with Israel began, but they are not recognised there as refugees.
In October 2023, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said he rejected any forced displacement of Palestinians into the Sinai peninsula, and that the only solution was an independent state for Palestinians.
Some on Israel's far-right want to return to Gaza and establish settlements there. Israel ordered a unilateral pull out in 2005, with 21 settlements dismantled and about 9,000 settlers evacuated by the army.
Trump's comments came as displaced people were delayed from returning to their homes in northern Gaza after Israel accused Hamas of breaching the terms of a ceasefire deal.
"There is nothing there - there is no life, everything is demolished. But still to return to your land, to your home is a big joy," one man anxiously waiting told the BBC.
In separate comments on Air Force One, Trump said he had ended former President Joe Biden's hold on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
"They paid for them and they've been waiting for them for a long time," he told reporters on Air Force One.
The US is by far the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, having helped it build one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries in the world.
But the war in Gaza led to renewed calls for the US to reduce or end arms shipments to Israel, because of the level of destruction caused by US weapons in the territory.
