The Mangawhai tornado damaged 50 homes and today marks two years since the Auckland Anniversary Day floods. Video / NZ Herald
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and Hamas vowed to defy US President Donald Trump’s displacement plan for Gazans.
A dispute over hostage-prisoner swaps under the Israel-Hamas ceasefire may be nearing resolution.
The ceasefire has allowed aid into Gaza, but the UN says the humanitarian situation remains dire.
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and armed group Hamas vow to defy proposals for the forced displacement of Gazans, after US President Donald Trump floated a plan to “clean out” the war-battered territory.
Meanwhile, Palestinian sources said a dispute linked to hostage-prisoner swaps under the Israel-Hamas trucedeal may be nearing a solution that could allow vast crowds of Palestinians jamming a coastal road to return to northern Gaza.
The latest swap saw four Israeli women hostages, all soldiers, and 200 prisoners, nearly all Palestinian, released on Saturday – the second such exchange during the fragile truce entering its second week.
Israeli military receives four female soldiers held captive in Gaza as part of continuing ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
After 15 months of war, Trump said Gaza had become a “demolition site”, adding he had spoken to Jordan’s King Abdullah II about moving Palestinians out of the territory.
“I’d like Egypt to take people. And I’d like Jordan to take people,” Trump told reporters.
Abbas, who is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, “expressed strong rejection and condemnation of any projects” aimed at displacing Palestinians from Gaza, his office said.
The Palestinian people “will not abandon their land and holy sites”.
After 15 months of war, Donald Trump said Gaza had become a "demolition site". Photo / Getty Images
Bassem Naim, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, told AFP that Palestinians would “foil such projects”, as they have done to similar plans “for displacement and alternative homelands over the decades”.
Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea “deplorable”.
For Palestinians, any attempt to move them from Gaza would evoke dark memories of what the Arab world calls the “Nakba”, or catastrophe – the mass displacement of Palestinians during Israel’s creation in 1948.
Islamic Jihad, which has fought alongside Hamas in Gaza, called Trump’s idea of moving Gaza’s roughly 2.4 million inhabitants 'deplorable'. Photo / Getty Images
‘Firm rejection’
“We say to Trump and the whole world: we will not leave Palestine or Gaza, no matter what happens,” said displaced Gaza resident Rashad al-Naji.
“You’re talking about probably a million and half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” Trump told reporters on Saturday aboard Air Force One.
Moving Gaza’s roughly 2.4 million inhabitants could be done “temporarily or could be long term”, he said.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who opposed the truce deal and has voiced support for re-establishing Israeli settlements in Gaza – called Trump’s suggestion “a great idea”.
The Arab League rejected the idea, warning against “attempts to uproot the Palestinian people from their land”.
“The forced displacement and eviction of people from their land can only be called ethnic cleansing”, the league said in a statement.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said “our rejection of the displacement of Palestinians is firm and will not change. Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians”.
Almost all Gazans have been displaced by the war that began after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Photo / Getty Images
Egypt’s foreign ministry said it rejected any infringement of Palestinians' “inalienable rights”.
Almost all Gazans have been displaced by the war that began after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
In Gaza, cars and carts loaded with belongings jammed a road near the Netzarim Corridor that Israel has blocked, preventing the expected return of hundreds of thousands of people to northern Gaza.
Israel said it would prevent Palestinians' passage until the release of Arbel Yehud, a civilian woman hostage.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that by not releasing her and not providing a “detailed list of all hostages' statuses”, Hamas had committed truce violations.
Hamas said that blocking returns to the north also amounted to a truce violation, adding it had provided “all the necessary guarantees” for Yehud’s release.
US President Donald Trump yesterday floated a plan to “clean out” the war-battered territory. Photo / Getty Images
Two Palestinian sources later told AFP that Yehud would be handed over within days.
“The crisis has been resolved,” said one Palestinian source familiar with the issue.
Israel has yet to comment.
‘Dire’ humanitarian situation
During the first phase of the Gaza truce, 33 hostages should be freed in staggered releases over six weeks in exchange for around 1900 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Dani Miran, whose hostage son Omri is not slated for release during the first phase, demonstrated outside Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem on Sunday.
“We want the agreement to continue and for them to bring our children back as quickly as possible – and all at once,” he said.
The truce has brought a surge of food, fuel, medicines and other aid into rubble-strewn Gaza, but the UN says “the humanitarian situation remains dire”.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, 87 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1210 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 47,306 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Israel has also reached a ceasefire with Hamas ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. Although it stipulated that Israeli forces must withdraw by Sunday that has not happened.
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli troops had killed nearly two dozen people as residents tried to return to their homes near the border.
The Israeli army said soldiers “fired warning shots” against “suspects”.
