Egypt on Saturday, 8 February, condemned Israeli remarks proposing a Palestinian state on Saudi territory, describing them as unacceptable interference in Saudi sovereignty and a violation of international law and the UN Charter.
Cairo expressed solidarity with Saudi Arabia, which it described as essential to regional stability. It reiterated its support for an independent Palestinian state on the 4 June 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and called for an international response protecting regional security.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had suggested in a Channel 14 interview that Saudi Arabia had enough land for a Palestinian state. Asked about Palestinian statehood as a condition for normalisation with Riyadh, he said he would not sign an agreement that endangered Israel.
The remarks came amid two weeks of controversy over US President Donald Trump’s proposal to move Gaza’s population to Egypt and Jordan, ostensibly to provide safer places to live. Egypt and Jordan have rejected emptying the enclave of its roughly two million inhabitants. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have meanwhile returned to devastated neighbourhoods following the ceasefire, many travelling on foot.
For Egyptian officials, opposition politicians and professional syndicates, rejection of displacement has become a rare point of broad agreement: reconstruction must not come at the price of Palestinians losing their homeland.
Trump has also spoken of US control over Gaza and claimed that Israel would hand it over after the fighting ended. His proposals revived debate about the policies of his first term and the 2020 peace plan widely known as the Deal of the Century.
The proposals should nevertheless be distinguished. The published 2020 framework said it did not call for uprooting Palestinians or Israelis from their homes. Connections drawn between that plan and the 2025 displacement proposal are political assessments, rather than proof that their published provisions were identical.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, 6 February, Trump envisaged Palestinians already resettled in new communities elsewhere in the region, with no need for US soldiers. He portrayed the project as offering security and prosperity and creating an exceptional real-estate development.
At his 4 February press conference with Netanyahu, Trump had said Gaza could become a Middle Eastern Riviera under US control. Netanyahu welcomed the idea as a departure from conventional thinking and praised Trump’s support for Israel.
On Friday, 7 February, while receiving Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump said there was no urgency in implementing the proposal. He described it as a real-estate transaction and said he was not talking about deploying US troops on the ground.
Egypt rejects removal from Gaza
Trump’s remarks on 25 January 2025 had proposed moving Palestinians out of Gaza and sought Egyptian and Jordanian cooperation. He said he would speak to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and had asked Jordan’s King Abdullah II to take more people, portraying alternative accommodation as a way to escape violence.
When claims circulated about a call between Trump and Sisi, Egyptian media quoted a senior official denying that such a call had taken place and saying presidential calls were announced through established channels.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry affirmed its support for Palestinians remaining on their land and rejected settlement, annexation and efforts to remove them, whether temporarily or permanently. It framed that position in terms of international law and Palestinians’ inalienable rights.
At a 29 January press conference with Kenya’s president, Sisi described displacement as an injustice Egypt could not participate in. He warned that making life impossible in Gaza could serve to drive its people out and said Egyptian national security could not be compromised.
Sisi said he wanted to work with Trump towards peace based on two states, arguing that the solution was Palestinian statehood, not removing Palestinians from their homeland. He also stressed the importance of public opinion, saying Egyptians would reject participation in such an injustice regardless of who held the presidency.
Egypt’s House of Representatives had also rejected displacement at an urgent meeting on 27 January, supporting the protection of national security and reaffirming the centrality of the Palestinian issue to Egyptian and Arab policy.
Trump nevertheless insisted on 30 January that Egypt and Jordan would accept Palestinians, invoking the assistance Washington had provided both countries. On 31 January, thousands gathered at the Rafah crossing to oppose displacement.
Former Israeli national security minister and far-right Otzma Yehudit leader Itamar Ben-Gvir welcomed Trump’s proposal and urged Netanyahu to begin implementing it. Israeli Channel 12 also reported possible destinations including Somaliland, Puntland and Morocco; these were media claims, not confirmed agreements to receive Palestinians.
In a statement that week, Egypt’s Foreign Ministry warned against Israeli officials’ calls to begin displacement arrangements. It said such moves would violate Palestinian rights, deepen the crisis and threaten regional peace. Cairo rejected any temporary or permanent seizure of Palestinian land through the removal of its inhabitants.
Diplomats and MPs question Trump’s approach
Former assistant foreign minister Rakha Ahmed Hassan, a member of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, sees the displacement remarks as part of a broader pattern of provocative statements. In his assessment, Trump uses such interventions to distract from economic problems in the United States while pursuing policies that isolate it internationally.
Hassan points to efforts to cut back the US Agency for International Development and bring American personnel home from overseas. That should not be confused with an order recalling every member of the agency’s global workforce to the United States.
He argues that Trump disregards established diplomatic practice and airs proposals without adequate consultation with advisers or affected parties. The absence of discussions with Arab governments and Palestinian representatives, Hassan says, contributed to widespread rejection and damaged Washington’s credibility when it speaks about human rights.
Hassan tells Zawia3 that he regards Trump as closely aligned with the Israeli government’s far right. He interprets the Palestinian resistance’s hostage-handover ceremonies, including their messaging about the day after the war, as an assertion that it will remain in Gaza.
He hopes the controversy will not disrupt the ceasefire, which he says Egypt worked hard to secure after prolonged delay.
Ghada Agamy, an MP representing Egyptians abroad, tells Zawia3 that Egypt will not bargain over its territory and has a longstanding commitment to Palestinians’ right to their land. Moving people out of their homeland, she says, cannot resolve the conflict.
Agamy says opposition to displacement unites the public, parliament, president and government. The Palestinian question must be resolved without removing its people or expanding the territory controlled by the occupation.
Opposition parties see a longer history
The proposal has dominated discussion among Egyptian political parties. The Civil Democratic Movement held a solidarity conference at the Conservative Party’s headquarters under the slogan that Palestine is in every Egyptian’s heart.
Former presidential candidate and Civil Democratic Movement leader Hamdeen Sabahy considers attempts to empty Palestine of its people part of a project dating to 1948, rather than something beginning with Trump’s 2020 plan. He describes that project as sustained by US power and expects more pressure on Egypt, while maintaining that Cairo can resist it.
Sabahy calls for a broad popular Arab movement, including Palestinians in the diaspora and supporters of Palestinian rights, to reject US-backed Israeli aggression and support the right of return.
Speaking to Zawia3, he characterises displacement as an attack on Palestinians’ right to live in and liberate their homeland, as well as an assault on Egypt, Jordan and the wider Arab world. He welcomes Cairo and Amman’s rejection and urges their governments and other Arab administrations to maintain a clear position.
He points to Palestinians walking back to northern Gaza and Lebanese residents returning south as expressions of attachment to their land, and calls for Arab public mobilisation in support of that right.
The Egyptian Parties Alliance, comprising 42 parties, also rejected Trump’s remarks. It said displacement would violate Palestinian rights and international resolutions and complicate a regional situation that Egyptian mediation had helped calm through the ceasefire.
Parties issuing statements against the proposal included Wafd, the Conservatives, Dostour, Bread and Freedom, the Socialist Popular Alliance, the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, Free Egyptians, Tagammu, the Arab Democratic Nasserist Party, Homat Watan and the National Front. They described the proposal as an infringement of Egyptian sovereignty and an attempt to extinguish the Palestinian cause.
Former presidential candidate Abdel Sanad Yamama, Wafd leader and professor of international law at Menoufia University, tells Zawia3 that Trump’s proposal conflicts with the UN-centred international order and the rights of Palestinians living on their territory.
Yamama says Egypt should refuse any bargain over its sovereignty, even if the price is the loss of US assistance.
He says Wafd was among the first parties to condemn the remarks and support the Egyptian authorities’ rejection of forced displacement.
Mobilising at Rafah
After Trump’s 25 January remarks, former presidential candidate Farid Zahran, leader of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, called for people to go to Rafah to demonstrate rejection of displacement and support for Palestinian rights. Political activists, party members and Sinai tribespeople joined the gathering on 31 January.
Zahran tells Zawia3 that the remarks can be understood as a trial balloon, while also reflecting Trump’s earlier approach to the conflict. He believes Trump’s outlook moves beyond the two-state solution towards eliminating the Palestinian national question.
Yet he argues that American demands are not inevitable outcomes. Egypt, he says, has room to coordinate pressure and use political and diplomatic tools, even if Washington intensifies its demands.
Zahran criticises Trump’s language as coercive and inappropriate for relations between states. He says the eventual outcome is difficult to predict and may involve concessions by different parties, but need not fulfil Washington’s demands.
He emphasises his party’s agreement with the Egyptian president and foreign minister on rejecting displacement, describing the convergence across political camps as an honourable national consensus.
Actor and Equality and Development Party leader Tayseer Fahmy says Egypt rejects the proposal because it will not participate in ending the Palestinian cause by removing Palestinians from their homeland.
“We reject displacement so that the Palestinian cause is not extinguished,” Fahmy says, “not because we refuse to welcome our Palestinian brothers and sisters in Egypt.”
For Fahmy, Palestinians’ return on foot to the rubble of northern Gaza was the strongest response to the proposal. She urges Arab populations to complement that response through public statements, protest and social media.
Lawyer and former Zamalek club president Mortada Mansour separately announced that he had sent a formal warning to the US Embassy in Cairo, giving Trump a week to withdraw his remarks. He said he would otherwise submit representations to the International Criminal Court alleging incitement to a war crime and to the International Court of Justice over violations of international law. This was an announcement of intended action, not a report that either court had accepted a case.
Professional syndicates join the rejection
Ten professional syndicates also rejected the proposal and backed Egypt’s position. In a joint statement following a 27 January meeting at the Journalists Syndicate, they said displacement would violate Palestinian rights, undermine the prospect of an independent state and threaten Egyptian and Jordanian sovereignty and national security.
The signatories represented lawyers, engineers, doctors, journalists, actors, cinema professionals, agricultural professionals, commerce professionals, veterinarians and dentists.
They praised Palestinians’ determination to return to their cities and villages despite the destruction, and endorsed the Foreign Ministry’s rejection of settlement, annexation or temporary or permanent removal from Palestinian land.
The syndicates warned that delaying a settlement restoring Palestinian rights would prolong regional conflict and undermine peaceful coexistence. They condemned what they described as international silence and complicity in atrocities against Gaza’s civilians and called for accountability before the International Criminal Court.
At a 28 January press conference, the syndicates announced plans for a delegation to Rafah and a joint letter to the US Embassy rejecting Trump’s remarks. They also proposed writing to the UN, European Commission and other international organisations to demand action and a just settlement.
Other planned measures included collecting donations for Gaza’s reconstruction, displaying Palestinian flags and solidarity banners at syndicate buildings and online, coordinating legal initiatives with the Lawyers Syndicate and Arab Lawyers Union, and hosting further public events.
They urged newspapers, websites and television channels to display a common message: support reconstruction, reject displacement, uphold the right of return and freedom for Palestine.
Egyptian political, parliamentary and professional circles converge on rejecting the removal of Palestinians and any infringement of Egyptian sovereignty. Their assessments of Trump’s intentions differ: some see continuity with a longer project to eliminate the Palestinian national question, while others see an opening gambit intended to test regional reactions.
Those expecting greater US pressure place their hopes in public mobilisation and the use of all available political and diplomatic tools. Egyptian reporting has also recalled earlier proposals to move Gaza residents to Sinai, including proposals attributed to Israeli officials in the 1970s and discussions during Hosni Mubarak’s presidency. Those historical accounts reinforce the argument, shared by the sources interviewed here, that reconstruction and Palestinian self-determination must proceed without forced displacement.
