Trump insists Egypt, Jordan will take Gazans

US President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that Egypt and Jordan would take in displaced Gazans, despite the two Arab nations dismissing his plan to move Palestinians from the territory.Trump’s comments came a day after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II rejected any forced displacement of Gazans following the war between Hamas and Israel.”They will do it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked for his response to the Egyptian and Jordanian refusal, and whether he would consider imposing tariffs on either country to push them.”They’re going to do it. We do a lot for them, and they’re going to do it.”After an Israel-Hamas ceasefire took effect on January 19, Trump last week floated a plan to “clean out” the Gaza Strip and for Palestinians to move to “safer” locations such as Egypt or Jordan.He said the 15-month war had reduced the Palestinian territory to a “demolition site.”Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff made a rare trip to Gaza this week, the White House said, in a bid to prop up the fragile ceasefire. He also met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Egypt’s Sisi, a key US ally, had said on Wednesday in his first public response to Trump’s comments that displacing “the Palestinian people from their land is an injustice that we cannot take part in.”Jordan’s King Abdullah II separately stressed his country’s “firm position on the need to keep the Palestinians on their land.”Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, both Egypt and Jordan have warned of plans to displace Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank across their borders.Israeli forces kill two in West BankThe Palestinian health ministry said that Israeli forces killed two Palestinians in Jenin in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, after the military announced that a soldier had also been killed in the territory.The Ramallah-based ministry said in a statement that “two citizens, whose identities are not yet known, were killed by the occupation forces’ bullets in Jenin camp this evening”.Earlier this month, Israeli forces launched a major offensive in the Jenin area dubbed Iron Wall.During a visit to the Jenin refugee camp on Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said the assault was aimed at destroying “terror infrastructure” built there “with funding and armament from Iran”.”The Jenin refugee camp will not return to what it was -– after the completion of the operation, the (Israeli army) will remain in the camp to ensure that terror does not return,” Katz added.Katz’s office later clarified to AFP that Israeli forces would not remain in the area “forever” after the operation’s end.Earlier on Thursday, the Israeli military announced the killing of a soldier in the northern West Bank. The Times of Israel reported he was killed in combat in Jenin.Israel’s military confirmed Thursday that it had killed 10 Palestinians in a strike on a village in the West Bank the day before, saying it had targeted militants.During a joint “counterterrorism” operation by the military and domestic security agency, an air force “aircraft struck a gathering of armed terrorists in the area of ​​Tamun” late Wednesday, the military said in a statement.”Approximately 10 terrorists were eliminated in the strike,” it said, adding two of the militants killed were involved in an attack that claimed the life of an Israeli soldier and injured three others in Tamun on January 20.The army said the two had also been “involved in additional shooting and explosive attacks”.On Wednesday night, the Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah had said an Israeli drone strike killed at least 10 people, with the military saying at the time that it had struck an “armed cell”.Violence has soared throughout the West Bank since Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, which sparked a devastating Israeli offensive in Gaza.Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 876 Palestinians, including many militants, in the West Bank since the beginning of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.At least 30 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.