Donald Trump has said Jordan and Egypt should take in Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza.
The US president called on the two nations to take in people either temporarily or permanently, adding: “We should just clear out the whole thing.”
“It’s literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there,” he told reporters after a call with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
Tens of thousands of people remain blocked from returning to northern Gaza after Israel accused Hamas of breaching a ceasefire agreement and refused to open checkpoints to allow crossings into the north.
A day after a second exchange involving four Israeli women hostages held in Gaza for 200 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, scores of stranded Palestinians waited along the main roads leading north.
Cars, trucks and rickshaws were overloaded with mattresses, food, and tents that served as shelters for over a year for those in the central and southern areas of the enclave.
“A sea of people is waiting for a signal to move back to Gaza City and the north,” said Tamer al Burai, a displaced person from Gaza City.
“This is the deal that was signed, isn’t it? Many of those people have no idea whether their houses back home are still standing. But they want to go regardless, they want to put up the tents next to the rubble of their houses, they want to feel home,” he told the Reuters news agency via a chat app.
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The ceasefire deal – mediated by the US, Qatar and Egypt – allows for thousands of displaced Palestinians to return to their communities.
However, not long after the Israeli female soldiers were released on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not allow Palestinians to return to northern Gaza until civilian hostage Arbel Yehud was released.
Israel had reportedly demanded she be on the list of the hostages released yesterday. However, she was not included by Hamas.
It is thought she might be held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group in the Gaza Strip.
A Hamas official told Reuters she was alive and well and would be released next Saturday.
The militant group later issued a statement blaming Israel for the delay and accusing it of stalling.
Reacting to Mr Trump’s suggestion, an official of Hamas echoed longstanding Palestinian fears about being driven permanently from their homes.
Palestinians “will not accept any offers or solutions, even if [such offers] appear to have good intentions under the guise of reconstruction, as announced in the proposals of US President Trump,” Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the Reuters on Sunday.
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Meanwhile, Lebanese authorities said Israeli forces had killed at least 15 people and injured more than 80 in the south of the country demanding their withdrawal in line with a separate ceasefire agreement with the Hezbollah militant group.
The Israeli military refused to withdraw by a Sunday deadline accusing Lebanese forces of not deploying quickly enough. The Lebanese army says it cannot move into areas until Israeli troops leave.
