The Palestinian resistance has strongly condemned US President Donald Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal. The left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) has stated that Mr Trump is promoting “satanic ideas to displace our people in Gaza”, adding that the Palestinian “people will remain in their homeland and will not leave.”
The US broadcaster NBC News has revealed, relying on inputs from five highly-placed sources in the Trump 2.0 administration, that the US is planning to relocate a million Gazans to Libya.
In return, the US will release billions of dollars worth of funds that Washington froze more than a decade ago.
During his visit to Qatar, on May 15th, Mr Trump unveiled a controversial plan to transform Gaza into a US-controlled “freedom zone”.
Mr Trump’s controversial Gaza displacement proposal comes amid escalating Israeli violence and a stalled peace process in the region. Mr Trump had revealed this plan earlier during the US visit of Benjamin Netanyahu in February 2025 and the subsequent visit by the Jordanian King Abdullah II.
All camps of the Palestinian resistance have strongly opposed Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal.
Condemning Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal colonial, the PFLP said that it “expresses its strong condemnation of the racist and dangerous statements made by US President Donald Trump, in which he called for the displacement of the residents of the Gaza Strip to a Middle Eastern state, and suggested that Gaza be a ‘free zone’ governed according to his administration’s vision, without any Palestinian national representation.”
Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal outlines his vision for the besieged and conflict-torn enclave as a territory rebuilt under US oversight, aiming to provide alleged safety and economic opportunities for Palestinians. He claimed that US involvement could stabilise the region and create a new chapter of peace.
However, Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal calls for significant changes in governance and control of the enclave, raising questions about Palestinian sovereignty.
In the same report, NBC News has quoted an official from the Palestinian resistance group Hamas saying that only the Palestinians have the right to decide their fate and no one else, condemning Mr Trump’s resettlement plan.
“Palestinians are very rooted in their homeland, very strongly committed to the homeland and they are ready to fight up to the end and to sacrifice anything to defend their land, their homeland, their families, and the future of their children,” Basem Naim, a Hamas official, was quoted by NBC News.
Mr Naim emphasised that the Palestinians are “exclusively the only party who have the right to decide for the Palestinians, including Gaza and Gazans, what to do and what not to do.”
The PFLP has equated Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal with the painful Nakba, the forceful eviction of Palestinians from their home, which took place 77 years ago.
“These statements, which intersect with what was reported by the American NBC network regarding the existence of a plan by the Trump administration to transfer nearly one million Palestinians from Gaza to Libya, reveal a sick colonial mentality that brings to mind the displacement, Nakba, and uprooting projects that our people have suffered since 1948,” the PFLP’s statement said.
Israel has wholeheartedly backed Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal as it resonates with their agenda of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the sea-facing enclave that Tel Aviv wants to use for its geoeconomic purposes.
Although Arab states and Palestinian leaders across all camps swiftly rejected Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement proposal, slamming it as an infringement on Palestinian rights and an extension of “Israel’s” control, the US president remains obstinate in promoting it as a “solution” to the conflict.
“This is the same mentality that the United States has practised since its inception through policies of genocide and uprooting that have targeted indigenous peoples in North America, within the context of an expansionist settlement project based on the erasure of indigenous peoples and the forcible control of land,” the PFLP said on Saturday, May 17th, highlighting how the white supremacists had once founded the US on forcibly seized indigenous people’s lands.
“We affirm to President Trump and everyone near and far that our people have no homeland but Palestine, and no place outside it. Gaza will never be a place for deportation or liquidation,” the PFLP asserted on Saturday.
Mr Trump’s government’s plan to resettle Gazans to Libya comes at a time when Israeli aggression has intensified in the besieged enclave, especially since Thursday, May 15th.
The US-backed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has launched its new operation, codenamed “Gideon’s Chariot” in the Gaza Strip with increased bombing on civilians since Thursday.
Between Friday, May 16th and Saturday, May 17th, Gaza’s health ministry has reported 153 people were killed and 459 suffered injuries—brought to the hospitals running without supplies—due to increased Israeli attacks.
After Israel resumed its attacks on Gaza, from March 18th onwards, scrapping a January 2025 ceasefire agreement, it has killed 3,131 people and wounded 8,632 others, according to the health ministry.
Many of these victims are children, along with paramedics and journalists.
Since the launch of the Gaza aggression in October 2023, Israel has killed 53,272 civilians and injured 120,673 civilians, the health ministry claimed.
In a statement issued on Friday, May 16th, the Government Media Office in Gaza, run by Hamas, condemned the US-backed Israeli government’s policy of starving the people of Gaza by blocking aid.
“We hold US President Donald Trump directly responsible, alongside the occupation, for the continued starvation of our Palestinian people, the blockade of crossings, and the stalling of food and relief aid deliveries,” the Government Media Office in Gaza said on Saturday, May 17th.
The government media office also condemned Mr Trump’s Gaza displacement and replacement proposal.
“We further affirm that Trump’s recent remarks on Gaza have had no tangible impact on the ground. They are empty, performative media statements—nothing more than a waste of time—which in effect and outcome fully align with the occupation’s policy of sustaining starvation, genocide, and normalising the slow death of civilians,” the Government Media Office said.
The Marxist-Leninist PFLP has, however, exhibited optimism as it claimed that such schemes are doomed.
“All displacement schemes are doomed to abject failure. Our people, who have offered thousands of martyrs and proven their steadfastness in the face of the most brutal colonial machine, will not go anywhere except to their occupied cities and villages in historic Palestine after liberation and the eradication of the occupation,” the PFLP said.
“The call to administer Gaza without Palestinian sovereignty and administration is a pathetic attempt to consolidate a liquidation project aimed at separating the Strip from the rest of the homeland and liquidating the Palestinian cause entirely. This is something we categorically reject and will resist with all our might,” the PFLP added.
“We call on the masses of our people, our nation, and the free people of the world to confront these schemes by all possible means, and to emphasise that Gaza is an integral part of Palestine, and no one has the power to decide its fate except its people,” it added.
Addressing Mr Trump and “those in his orbit”, the PFLP added, “The arrogant ‘cowboy’ mentality, which views people as nothing more than subjects who can be deported or whose destinies can be controlled, will not succeed in subjugating our people or uprooting them from their land. This mentality, based on arrogance, racism, and treating people’s issues as if they were real estate deals or commercial projects, has failed throughout history and will fail again on the rock of the steadfastness of our Palestinian people. Our people have not and will not kneel. They will remain steadfast and cling to their right to return, liberation, and self-determination, despite Trump, the occupation, and their lackeys.”
