By Ryan Patrick Jones
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that he plans to speak to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that Netanyahu would be traveling to Washington to meet with him.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump did not give a date for the face-to-face meeting, but said it would take place “very soon.”
The meeting comes amid a fragile six-week ceasefire that has brought a temporary pause to 15 months of fighting between Israel and militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Trump also said Monday he wants Egypt to take in Palestinians from Gaza, where much of the population has been displaced by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack.
“I wish he would take some. We help them a lot, and I’m sure he can help us,” Trump said of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom he called a “friend.”
“I’d like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence,” Trump said of Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump’s comments come after he floated at the weekend the idea that Egypt and Jordan, which border Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to the south and east, respectively, should take in Palestinians from Gaza because “almost everything is demolished and people are dying there.”
The new U.S. president said he made the request in a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Saturday.
Jordan is already home to several million Palestinians, while tens of thousands live in Egypt. Both countries pushed back over the weekend after Trump said they should take in Palestinians from Gaza, where Israel’s military assault has caused a humanitarian crisis and killed tens of thousands.
The suggestion was also rejected by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza, and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who exercises limited self-rule in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries oppose removing Palestinians from Gaza, in part because it is land that Palestinians want as part of a future Palestinian state.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry, and led to accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies. The fighting has currently paused amid a fragile ceasefire.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, agreed this month with Egyptian and Qatari mediation and U.S. support, 33 hostages are due to be released during a six-week ceasefire, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them serving life sentences in Israeli jails. Seven hostages and 290 prisoners have so far been exchanged.
Displaced Palestinians began returning to their homes in Gaza City this week found a city in ruins after 15 months of fighting.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Washington; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
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