'No to Trump's plan!' Palestinians vow to stay in Gaza

Gazans slammed US President Donald Trump’s plan to take over the Gaza Strip and resettle Palestinians elsewhere, vowing to never leave the ruins of their homes in the coastal enclave that Trump wants to turn into a “Riviera of the Middle East“.

“Trump can go to hell, with his ideas, with his money, and with his beliefs. We are going nowhere. We are not some of his assets,” Samir Abu Basel told Reuters from Gaza City.

“If he wants to resolve this conflict he should take the Israelis and put them in one of the states [in America]. They are the strangers, not the Palestinians. We are the owners of the land,” said the father of five, who has been displaced from his house near Jabalia on Gaza’s northern edge.

Trump said he envisioned building a resort where international communities could live after over 15 months of Israeli bombardment devastated the tiny coastal enclave and killed more than 47,000 Palestinians.

Palestinians said the bombs had failed to eject them from Gaza and Trump would not succeed in doing so.

“He spoke with much arrogance…he can test us, and soon he will find out his fantasies don’t work with us,” said Abu Basel.

Palestinians have once again been displaced from their homes over the past 15 months, many forced to relocate five or more times as Israel’s bombing of the small enclave intensified and it targeted areas it had previously declared to be ‘safe zones’.

Many questioned whether the ultimate aid was the complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza in order to allow Zionist settlers to take over the Strip.

“We will not leave our areas, we will not allow a second Nakba. We have brought our kids up teaching them that they can’t leave their home and they can’t allow a second Nakba,” Um Tamer Jamal, a 65-year-old mother of six, said, in reference to the 1948 forced expulsion of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes to make way for the creation of the Zionist state of Israel.

“[Trump] is crazy. We didn’t leave Gaza under the bombardment and the starvation, how does he intend to eject us? We are going nowhere,” she said from Gaza City.

Uniting rivals

The shock move from Trump, a former New York property developer, was swiftly condemned by international powers as well as Palestinian leaders.

The rival Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and the Islamist group Hamas united in rejecting what they said was a plan to seize the Mediterranean coastal territory and expel Palestinians from their homeland.

Abbas said the Palestinians would not relinquish “their land, rights and sacred sites, and that the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the land of the State of Palestine, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior official of Hamas, which governs Gaza, said Trump’s statement about taking over the enclave was “ridiculous and absurd”.

“Any ideas of this kind are capable of igniting the region,” he said.

In Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, families sitting near the rubble of a destroyed building said they were waiting for their homes to be rebuilt, not to be expelled from them.

Addressing President Trump, Ahmed Shahin said: “You helped Israel in the first place in this destruction that we can see here. Therefore, you have to rebuild for us while we are on this land. You can’t say we have to leave for you to rebuild.”

READ: QUOTES – Global reaction to Trump's Gaza Strip takeover plan

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