Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
ZOA strongly praises President Trump’s sensible plan for Gazan Arabs to emigrate to Egypt and Jordan. ZOA also strongly praises the president for releasing to Israel the military equipment that Israel had purchased, which the Biden administration had refused to deliver to Israel. Both of these important developments will assure a far more secure and “strength through peace” peaceful Middle East.
On Saturday (January 25) Pres. Trump told reporters that he spoke with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and would speak with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, and explained: “I’d like Egypt to take people, and I’d like Jordan to take people. You’re talking about probably a million and a half people, we just clean out that whole thing. You know over the centuries it’s had many, many conflicts. And I don’t know, something has to happen. It’s literally a demolition site, almost everything is demolished and people are dying there so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing at a different location where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
Pres. Trump also said he complimented Jordan for having successfully accepted Palestinian refugees and told King Abdullah: “I’d love for you to take on more, cause I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess.”
ZOA agrees that this may well be a good way to move toward some peace in the region and bring quiet to southern Israel and is long overdue.
Israel welcomed and successfully resettled close to one million Jews who were forced out of Arab countries without their possessions or assets in the 1940s and 1950s, even while Israel was in the midst of defending herself from six invading Arab armies and local Arab attackers. By contrast, Arab governments refused to admit and resettle Arabs. Instead of welcoming and resettling their Arab brethren where they could lead productive, peaceful lives, Arab countries kept their Arab brothers as “refugees” in Gaza and Judea/Samaria, decade after decade, to use them as cannon fodder to attack and murder Jews, and to use them as propaganda against Israel. Egypt, Jordan and other Arab nations slammed shut their doors – despite the fact that a large proportion of Gazan Arabs came from Egypt, as demonstrated by many histories of the region, by the many Egyptian names among the population, and as even admitted by Hamas leadership; and despite the fact that Jordan was 80% carved out of the Palestine Mandate, its population is 70% “Palestinian,” and the King of Jordan, whose family came from Saudi Arabia, has married a Palestinian Arab woman.
Gazan civilians have been clamoring to leave “Hamastan” (Gaza), and yet Egypt has continued to keep its doors sealed, even after October 7. And Jordan’s King Abdullah II said on November 12, 2024: “No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt.”
As President Trump stated, “something has to happen.” Something has to change. We need to prevent another October 7 and another Gaza war. We need to allow Gazan civilians to live somewhere that isn’t controlled by genocidal terror groups Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah. Somewhere where they can aspire to be healers and helpers – instead of being taught from birth to aspire to be jihadis who murder Jews. President Trump’s plan would promote movement toward that goal.
The U.S., under our strong President Trump, has the ability – including the power of the purse (our massive foreign aid to Egypt and Jordan—over $3 billion—to pressure Jordan and Egypt to accept their Arab/Islamic brothers and sisters in their respective countries. We look forward to President Trump using all the levers at his disposal to do so, and thereby moving toward a safer, more peaceful Middle East.
Gaza Was Jewish Territory
It’s also important to recall the Jewish people’s long history in Gaza, dating from Biblical times: Gaza was part of the territory promised to the Jewish people in both the bible and the Mandate. Gaza was recaptured by Judah the Maccabee’s brother in 145 CE, who sent Jews to rebuild the Jewish community there. Gaza was the largest Jewish community in the country at the time of the Arab invasion in the seventh century. During the recent Gaza war, the IDF rediscovered the Jewish synagogue in Gaza built in 508 CE with Hebrew writing and mosaics of King David (originally discovered in 1965). There were also Jewish communities in Gaza during medieval times; the Jewish communities were lost when Egypt attacked Gaza in 1948; and the 21 thriving Jewish communities that were uprooted from Gaza in 2005, when Israel foolishly withdrew from Gaza. (See more at “ZOA Special Report – Gaza: The Case Against Israeli Withdrawal – U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff: Gaza is crucial to Israel’s security,” Feb. 3, 2004.)