US President Donald Trump has requested Egypt and Jordan to allow Palestinians from Gaza to migrate into the countries.
The president said he has pushed the request to Jordan's King Abdullah and planned to ask Egypt's president on Sunday, too.
"You're talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing". He added that the move "could be temporary" or "could be long-term," Trump said, as he described Gaza as a "demolition site".
The comments may not likely sit well with Palestinians in Gaza, for whom it is their home, even as both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority has condemned the proposal.
More so, Jordan's foreign minister noted that the kingdom was "firm and unwavering" in its rejection of displacing Palestinians.
Report by BBC said a ceasefire is being observed in Gaza after a deal between Israel and Hamas to halt the war which began when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken back to Gaza as hostages.
More than 47,200 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed in Israel's offensive, Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says.
Most of Gaza's two million residents have been displaced in the past 15 months of the war, which has flattened much of Gaza's infrastructure.
The United Nations has previously estimated that 60% of structures across Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, and it could take decades to rebuild.
Trump made his comments while speaking to reporters on board the Air Force One.
"Almost everything is demolished and people are dying there.
"So I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where maybe they can live in peace for a change."
Trump did not give further details of the proposal, and the subject was not referenced in the White House's official read-out of the call.
"Our Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip endured death and destruction for 15 months… without leaving their land. Therefore, they will not accept any offers or solutions, even if they appear to be good intentions under the title of reconstruction, as announced by US President Trump's proposals," Bassem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, told the BBC.
"Our people, just as they have thwarted all plans for displacement and an alternative homeland over the decades, will also thwart such projects," he added.
In the West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas "expressed strong rejection and condemnation of any projects aimed at displacing our people from the Gaza Strip".
Asked about Trump's comments, Abu Yahya Rashid, a man displaced in the southern city of Khan Younis said:
"We are the ones who decide our fate and what we want. This land is ours and the property of our ancestors throughout history. We will not leave it except as corpses."
Decades of US foreign policy has committed to the creation of a Palestinian state, with Gaza as a key part. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects this.
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.
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