———- Makes 2,000-pound bombs available to Israel, undoing Biden pause
———- Biden put the hold on the delivery of those bombs due to concern over the impact they could have
DM Monitoring
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump floated a plan Saturday to “just clean out” Gaza, and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory in a bid to create Middle East peace.
Describing Gaza as a “demolition site” after the war between Israel and Hamas, Trump said he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about the issue and expected to talk to Egypt’s leader on Sunday.
“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing. You know, over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts that site. And I don’t know, something has to happen.”
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have been displaced, often multiple times, by the war that began with Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Trump said moving Gaza’s inhabitants could be “temporarily or could be long term.”
“It’s literally a demolition site right now, almost everything is demolished, and people are dying there,” added Trump.
“So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has left much of the Palestinian territory in ruins, with infrastructure destroyed, and the United Nations estimates reconstruction will take many years.
Earlier, Republican President Donald Trump said on Saturday he has instructed the US military to release a hold imposed by Democratic former President Joe Biden on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
The move was widely expected. “We released them. We released them today. And they’ll have them. They paid for them and they’ve been waiting for them for a long time. They’ve been in storage,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. Biden put the hold on the delivery of those bombs due to concern over the impact they could have on the civilian population, particularly in Gaza’s Rafah, during Israel’s war in the Palestinian enclave. One 2,000-pound bomb can rip through thick concrete and metal, creating a wide blast radius. Reuters reported last year that the Biden administration had sent thousands of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian Hamas militants from Gaza but had put a hold on one shipment.
Washington has announced assistance for Israel worth billions of dollars since the war began.
When asked why he released the powerful bombs, Trump responded, “because they bought them.”
Earlier on Saturday, Trump said on the Truth Social platform, “A lot of things that were ordered and paid for by Israel, but have not been sent by Biden, are now on their way!”
