Egypt Rejects Trump’s Plan to Empty Gaza

Egypt has announced the development of a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip, one that guarantees Palestinians the right to remain on their land. This declaration comes as a direct rebuttal to a controversial proposal from U.S. President Donald Trump, who recently suggested that two million Palestinians in Gaza be permanently relocated to Jordan, Egypt, and other nations. Egypt’s firm stance sets the stage for a diplomatic clash between American ambitions and Arab principles.

The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasized the need for a just and lasting solution to the Palestinian issue, grounded in international law and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people. While Egypt remains open to dialogue with the U.S., it made clear that any approach based on forced displacement is unacceptable. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is reportedly working on an alternative reconstruction plan, supported by other Arab nations, that prioritizes dignity and sovereignty.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has also condemned Trump’s plan, stating unequivocally that all Arab nations reject the idea of displacing Palestinians. He reiterated that the only viable path forward is the rebuilding of Gaza in a manner that respects Palestinian identity and ownership. He warned that any forced resettlement would only inflame tensions and sow instability in the region for years to come.

The United Nations has weighed in, warning that any attempt to forcibly relocate Gaza’s population would be illegal under international law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.” The Geneva Conventions prohibit the forced transfer of civilian populations in conflict zones. Experts argue that Trump’s proposal risks violating these statutes and undermines the global legal order.

In response to the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Gaza, Arab states have introduced a bold reconstruction proposal worth $53 billion. This plan includes rebuilding critical infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, power plants, and housing, while also investing in job creation and economic revitalization. Central to the plan is ensuring that Palestinians remain on their land and play a leading role in shaping Gaza’s future.

The contrast between the Arab vision and Trump’s "Riviera" dream for Gaza is stark. While the Arab proposal aims to restore dignity and stability, Trump’s plan envisions luxury hotels, ports, and investment zones—absent the very people who call Gaza home. Critics have likened it to a real estate project masked as diplomacy, with little regard for the human cost.

International legal scholars have slammed the Trump proposal, saying there is no legal precedent for forcibly depopulating a territory for redevelopment. Such measures, especially when they disproportionately target a specific ethnic group, fit the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing and violate basic human rights principles.

Human rights organizations and legal bodies around the world are calling for investigations into potential war crimes committed during the recent military campaign in Gaza. The destruction of civilian infrastructure and deliberate targeting of densely populated areas have raised serious concerns, prompting calls for accountability and justice.

Gaza’s humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Food, water, and medical supplies are scarce. Reports of widespread hunger and malnutrition are increasing. But amid the devastation, hope flickers. The united front of Arab nations and civil society groups offers a lifeline to Gaza’s besieged population.

Egypt, with its strategic position and historical role in the Palestinian cause, is seen as a key player in any peace effort. Its rejection of Trump’s plan underscores a growing determination in the Arab world to chart a path forward based on justice, not expediency. This stance is seen not just as a defense of Gaza but as a defense of Arab dignity.

Reconstruction, if guided by the Arab plan, would not only rebuild homes and schools but restore the social and cultural fabric of Gaza. It would provide jobs, strengthen local industries, and give young Palestinians a reason to hope again. It would be a declaration that Gaza belongs to its people—not foreign powers or investors.

In contrast, Trump’s plan continues to face mounting opposition. Protests have erupted across the Arab world and even within the United States, where faith groups, academics, and human rights activists have condemned the policy as inhumane and imperialist. “Gaza is not for sale,” read a protest banner in downtown Washington.

Palestinians now find themselves at a critical juncture. On one side is the threat of permanent displacement; on the other, a chance at recovery led by allies who still believe in their cause. The world must decide where it stands—alongside justice and self-determination or with those who would erase an entire people for political and economic gain.

Gaza is not just a strip of land. It is a living community with history, memory, and resistance. Any reconstruction effort that ignores this reality is doomed to fail. The future of Gaza must be written by Palestinians, not dictated from Washington boardrooms.

Egypt’s bold rejection of Trump’s plan is a reminder that principles still matter in diplomacy. It is also a call to action for the international community to support a reconstruction model that honors human dignity and the right of return.

The road ahead will not be easy. But if the Arab world stands firm and the global community listens, Gaza can rise again—not as a resort devoid of its people, but as a homeland rebuilt with pride and resilience.

History will judge this moment. It will remember who stood for justice and who stood for profit. And it will remember that the future of Gaza must belong to those who never left it.

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Women Find Summer Fun at Gaza Beach Homes

This summer, Maisara Abu Shamala, a painter, organized two trips with her friends to a vacation property she had rented. “The trips were fun,” she told Al-Monitor. “We swam the entire day without an abaya or veil. Women feel comfortable in these private rentals, which usually consist of several bedrooms, closets, a bathroom, a kitchen and a small garden with a big swimming pool for adults and another small one for children.”

Given the high demand for rental properties in summer, Abu Shamala said that it was not easy to find one in the Nuseirat camp, in central Gaza, but she eventually succeeded. “A rental property costs 400-600 shekels [$106-160] per day, and what made me think of booking one is that my husband does not allow me to go to the beach given the presence of a lot of men there,” she said. “Also, I do not like it when the wet abaya sticks to my body and becomes somewhat revealing.”

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Palestine creates special engineering committee to support a pilot project of mud-brick housing movement

Palestine government supporting the mud-brick housing movement and has pledged money and assembled a special engineering committee to investigate a pilot project that will test a multistory school to determine just how safe and plausible building more widespread with mud brick can be.

Of course, all of this has spawned a new temporary economy in tunnel mud removal and brick manufacturing, and the engineering itself is quite antiquated but none the more outdated.

They’re using combinations of mud, sand, salt, and straw, and in some cases rubble to forge bricks and build basic homes. Some have already been said to have withstood elements of winter rains and harsh summer sun....

It’s almost as if the tunnels had been turned inside out, sort of poetically unraveled overland as a result of the Israeli assaults, and now offer the dual benefit of both relief housing while also keeping the essential corridors of underground commerce alive. In some ways it’s just good old-fashioned poetic justice bound with some gritty irony.

Mud Architecture in Gaza

When the UN officials gave Majid Asamna the keys to his new mud-brick home they told him it was just a temporary replacement for the house the Israelis demolished nearly a year ago.

But like many Gazans left homeless by the devastating Israeli offensive launched on the Hamas-ruled territory, he is not so sure.

"There will never be reconstruction," he said, as he sipped coffee in front of the dun-coloured structure. "I'm sure these temporary houses will become permanent."

Israel and Egypt have sealed Gaza off to all but limited humanitarian aid since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in June 2007, and the territory's 1.5 million residents have almost no access to building materials.

Earlier this week, 16 rights groups including Amnesty International and Oxfam accused the international community of having "betrayed" Gaza's civilians by failing to end the blockade.

The groups said in a report that Israel had allowed only 41 truckloads of construction materials into Gaza since the devastating 22-day war ended with reciprocal ceasefires on January 18.





Those parts of the territory most devastated by the war, like the sprawling wasteland of Ezbet Abed Rabbo, where Asamna lives, have changed little since the fighting came to an end.

Until this month, Asamna and many of his neighbours lived in tents and small shelters donated by aid groups and erected on the ruins of their homes.

But then he became the first recipient of a mud-brick home constructed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees as a stopgap measure to help some of Gaza's homeless survive another winter with no reconstruction in sight.

"This is not an alternative to reconstruction," says Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), adding that Asamna's home is a "model" for scores of mud-brick homes the agency plans to build.

The first phase of the project calls for the construction of 120 homes at a cost of 12,000 to 15,000 dollars (8,000 to 10,000 euros) each with funding from Kuwait and the Red Crescent Society of the United Arab Emirates.

The agency is training workers to make the mud bricks at its headquarters and hopes to provide dozens of jobs in the territory where more than 80 percent of the population relies on foreign aid.

Some 6,400 homes were destroyed or severely damaged in the conflict, according to UN figures, with most of their owners today confined to tents or forced to crowd in with relatives living elsewhere in Gaza.

Asamna's home was destroyed after some 60 members of his extended family had fled their own homes and taken up residence there. Israeli troops ordered them out before they razed it with bulldozers.

Now he resides in a 70 square metre (750 square foot) mud-brick house with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a small room for receiving guests.

A few metres (yards) away, the dingy tent and small mobile shelter where he has been living with his wife for most of the last year are still standing.

"It's a reminder of our tragedy," he says. "Every time I look at the tent I realise how good the mud house is."

A few Gazans had already erected mud-brick homes on their own earlier this year, and the Hamas-run government has used mud bricks to rebuild one of the many police stations bombed in the opening days of the war.

Umm Jamal, 49, a neighbour of Asamna who also lost her house during the war, hopes to get her mud-brick shelter before the winter rains come to the coastal territory.

"A year is long enough," she said. "We thank UNRWA for this aid, which will make the world pay attention to our disastrous conditions."

Abu Hassan, a 69-year-old refugee from the 1948 war whose home was destroyed in January, remembers living in a similar structure when he was growing up in what is now the Israeli town of Ashkelon.

"I would feel lucky to have a mud-brick house," he says. "I was born in one and the I'll never forget how nice it was... They are warm in the winter and cool in the summer."

Others are less optimistic. Only Gazans who are registered as refugees with the United Nations as a result of the 1948 war that accompanied the creation of Israel are eligible for the mud-brick homes.

The Samuni family, which lost 29 members during the war and had their homes and farms flattened, are not eligible for aid because they are not refugees, Mohammed al-Samuni, 35, says bitterly.

"The (Israeli) occupation never asked us whether we were refugees or natives when they destroyed our homes."

Israeli Property Developers Ready to Move Into Gaza

Gaza has been earmarked for re-development by real estate companies in Israel, a high ranking Israeli official has admitted.

Moshe Rabin, a property developer from Tel Aviv is licking his lips at the prospect of building more real-estate in Gaza. We meet him in a luxurious air conditioned office in the Herzliya district.

"Welcome my friend, welcome. We have many new penthouse apartments for you in Gaza. At the moment they are off-plan but we hope to start construction once we bulldoze away the bones and rotting carcasses of the Palestinian women and children. You will never know or realise that you are living on what was once the land of a disenfranchised people. Indeed you can say the same of much of what is Israel today, it used to belong to the untermensch and our wonderful bulldozers have simply erased them from the land completely. I know what you are thinking my friend, yes, you are thinking that we are no better than the Nazis who tried to erase us from the earth in WW2. Well, there is a profound difference my friend, they spoke German, we speak Hebrew. That's the only difference though," Mr Rabin, laughs hysterically as he rubs his hands incessantly eager to get down to business.

We pretend to be interested in the seafront Gaza properties and his eyes light up like beacons when we pronounce we might purchase more than one apartment.

Mr Rabin's smile is however wiped off his face after we make our excuses and leave his luxurious office eager to get away from his carrion smile.

Real Estate opportunities in Gaza are a major issue for the Israeli government who see gold amongst the rubble and decapitated corpses of Gaza's children.

The Israeli territories which have already been forcibly occupied are not enough for the developers anymore. With greed comes even more greed, and the developers have tasted money and are thirsting for more. The only problem is the Palestinian people who will have to be bombed out and murdered in cold blood.

"As media exercises go, we Israelis are supported by the West 110% even with our genocidal activities, but you do get the odd politician from a Western country who actually says something against Israel once in awhile. That politician usually loses their job immediately afterwards so it is not a good career move. The same also applies to journalists who dare not utter any words against the Israelis, lest they lose their jobs as well. Even bombing a UN controlled school and killing 45 women and children in Gaza is brushed under the carpet because Palestinians are not actually considered as humans, much like the Jews were not considered as humans during WW2. They are sub-human fodder, they are considered by us Zionist Nazis as only worthy of death and not worthy of life. This is why we will take even more of their lands and push them into the sea once and for all. We cannot tolerate their smell or even their presence from many miles away," an Israeli Colonel for the IDF told CNN during a press conference.

Just like the concentration camps of Nazi occupied Poland in the second World War, there are many who choose to turn a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinian people who have suffered immensely for many years under the brutal Israeli regime. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Bełżec and Lublin were ignored by the populations living around them as well, it was as if these places were non existent even during their busiest moments. The similarity is astounding with Gaza, a cesspool of a ghetto lost under a sea of Israeli bulldozers and Panzers daily crushing the bones and rotting carcasses of dead Palestinians whilst all around is silence.

Emad Al Khaledi, an engineer from Gaza, who invent the mud brick construction in Palestine

In an attempt to overcome the Israeli restrictions, Emad Al Khaledi, an engineer from Gaza and owner of an idle cementbrick factory, thought about using earth resources two years ago.

"I thought of finding an alternative to cement when the Israeli blockade tightened," he said. "I tested many natural materials and finally came up with this product."

The product is a solid block, ready for construction. It is a mixture of sand, clay, calcium and water that are compressed together in one manual machine.

"After the war, the idea needed to be implemented on the ground," he proudly said. "We started to produce the bricks after the material was successfully tested."

The materials and the blocks were tested in laboratories of the Islamic University and the Engineers' Syndicate and they proved high quality within the international standards, he said.

The manual machine produces 15,000 blocks each day, he said, adding that he is working on manufacturing an automatic machine which will produce 50,000 blocks every day.

Al Khaledi, an experienced engineer by profession and mud enthusiast by choice, said his initiative progressed in high speed, especially after the war on Gaza, as thousands of people were left homeless and had to live in tents and other makeshift shelters.

"We tried to build a house and the project was a success," said Al Khaledi, referring to al-Athamna's house. "The UNRWA asked us to produce bricks to build houses for displaced people after they saw how successful our work was."