Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich leads a meeting of his Religious Zionism Party at the Knesset in Jerusalem, Jan. 27, 2025. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.
By Akiva Van Koningsveld and Amelie Botbol
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday applauded U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that Gazans be offered residency in Arab nations as the “most realistic solution.”
“For 76 years, they have been held in Gaza—on purpose—in poverty, in destitution, in overcrowding,” the finance minister told JNS following a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem on Monday afternoon.
“Instead of helping them start a new life,” the United Nations kept the Palestinians “in very difficult situations on purpose, so that they would suffer,” he said. “Why? To maintain their desire to destroy the State of Israel.”
“They told them: You will suffer. Do you know why? Because of the Jews. Do you know what the solution to your suffering is? To return to Safed, Haifa, Acre, Jaffa,” Smotrich continued, naming cities in Israel.
The Gaza Strip “is a time bomb that the Arab world for years kept as it was, precisely to get to Oct. 7,” the minister stated, referring to the 2023 Hamas massacre in which some 1,200 people, primarily Jews, were murdered.
While the attack was led by Hamas’s Nukhba force, they were followed by “ordinary civilians, women, men, children, who slaughtered, raped, burned,” said Smotrich.
“Do you know where this hatred comes from? For 76 years, they were kept like this, in refugee camps, with nothing. They were told that this suffering was because of the Jews. So there are more than 1.5 million people who have grown up for generations with hate for Israel and antisemitism,” he continued.
According to the Religious Zionism Party leader, Trump’s proposal to allow Gazans to leave the Strip “is the most realistic solution in the world. “
“Do you know what isn’t realistic? What we’ve been trying to do for a hundred years and haven’t succeeded in: To divide the land [of Israel],” he added, listing the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan, the Oslo Accords, Camp David and the Annapolis Conference as examples of failures.
“It is nonsense to do the same thing over and over again and to expect a different response every time,” he added, paraphrasing Albert Einstein.
“We’ve been attempting peace, co-existence, two countries, but what we don’t understand is that the other side doesn’t want to live next to us,” he told JNS. “They want to live in our place. Only someone like that is able to get to these levels of cruelty that we saw on Oct. 7.”
The only solution, he continued, “is to take all these refugees and, after 76 years, help them start a new life and really allow them to improve their lives and build their families. It would be good for them, for us, for the Middle East and for the world.”
On Saturday, Trump called on Arab countries that have come out in support of the Palestinians, singling out Egypt and Jordan, to take in more Palestinians from Gaza, which has suffered extensive damage during Israel’s 15-month war against the Hamas terrorist group.
“I’d like Egypt to take people,” Trump said, according to an Associated Press report. “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing and say, ‘You know, it’s over.’
Trump on Monday doubled down on the proposal, saying he would like to see Gazans “living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence so much,” Agence France-Presse reported.
“When you look at the Gaza Strip, it’s been hell for so many years,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, according to the AFP report. He added, “There’s always been violence associated with it.”
Asked how this would impact prospects of a two-state solution, Trump said he would discuss the matter with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting in Washington “in the not-too-distant future.”
Netanyahu’s office has not responded to Trump’s comments. However, senior Israeli officials told journalist Amit Segal of Channel 12 News that the U.S. president’s remarks were “not a slip of the tongue but part of a much broader move than it seems,” coordinated with the Jewish state.
On Monday, Segal reported that the Trump administration was in talks with Albania, which he said could take in up to 100,000 Gaza refugees.
Sources in Jerusalem told Channel 12 that Egypt and Jordan will refuse to host refugees, citing Albania and Indonesia are more feasible options.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama dismissed the report as “fake news” in a subsequent statement, claiming that “Albania has not been asked by anyone, nor can we even consider to take on any such responsibility.”
“Albania is not in the Middle East itself, and from the heart of Europe, we cannot do more than any other European country in such a matter,” tweeted the Albanian leader. He added, “Yet, we wish and pray that the Palestinian people are given the chance to live in their own state, as free people under democratic rule, and that Hamas will never again be able to harm Israel—or, first and foremost, the Palestinians themselves.”
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of Israel’s right-wing opposition Otzma Yehudit Party, told JNS on Monday that the suggestion of moving the residents of Gaza elsewhere is a “very important, very right idea.”
“I think the relationship with President Trump will be an excellent relationship,” he added, urging Netanyahu to “embrace Trump, to love him, but also to tell him we have principles that we need to stand on.”
Source: JNS
