CAIRO: A senior Hamas official on Monday called on supporters worldwide to pick up weapons and fight US President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate more than two million Gazans to neighbouring countries such as Egypt and Jordan.
“In the face of this sinister plan – one that combines massacres with starvation – anyone who can bear arms, anywhere in the world, must take action,” Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.
“Do not withhold an explosive, a bullet, a knife, or a stone. Let everyone break their silence.”
Abu Zuhri’s call comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered to let Hamas leaders leave Gaza but demanded that the Palestinian group disarm in the final stages of the war in Gaza.
Hamas has expressed a willingness to relinquish Gaza’s administration, but has warned its weapons are a “red line”.
Netanyahu said Israel was working towards a plan proposed by Trump to displace Gazans to other countries.
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Netanyahu said that after the war, Israel would ensure overall security in Gaza and “enable the implementation of the Trump plan” – which had initially called for the mass displacement of all 2.4 million people living in the Palestinian territory – calling it a “voluntary migration plan”.
Days after taking office in January, Trump floated a proposal to move Gaza’s population out of the war-battered territory, suggesting that Egypt or Jordan could take them in.
Both countries, along with other Arab allies, governments around the world and the Palestinians themselves, have flatly rejected the notion.
Trump later appeared to backtrack on the proposal, saying he was “not forcing” his widely condemned plan.
“Nobody’s expelling any Palestinians,” Trump said at the White House in mid-March, remarks welcomed by Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
‘Voluntary departure’
Arab nations have since come up with an alternative plan for rebuilding the Gaza Strip without relocating its people, which would take place under the future administration of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.
For Palestinians, any attempts to force them out of Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba”, or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.
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Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz in February said that a special agency would be established for the “voluntary departure” of Gazans.
A defence ministry statement said an initial plan included “extensive assistance that will allow any Gaza resident who wishes to emigrate voluntarily to a third country to receive a comprehensive package, which includes, among other things, special departure arrangements via sea, air, and land”.
Israel resumed intense bombing of Gaza on March 18 and then launched a new ground offensive, ending a nearly two-month ceasefire in the war with Hamas.
Since the fighting restarted, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says that at least 1,001 people have been killed.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 50,357 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
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