Palestinians’ rejection: ‘If they offered me an entire city instead of the rubble of my home, I would not accept it.’
Palestinians inspect the rubble of destroyed buildings in Gaza City on 3 February 2025
Tareq S. Hajjaj reports in Mondoweiss on 5 February 2025 :
On Monday, President Donald Trump told reporters that the U.S. would take over Gaza and permanently relocate its Palestinian residents to neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man responsible for Gaza’s devastation, sat beside him and grinned as Trump answered a reporter about whether Palestinians would be allowed to return: “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.”
But after 15 months of displacement, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have already made their long-awaited return to their homes in northern Gaza. Most of them had only rubble to go back to, but they insisted on making the long trek on foot, many of them vowing never to leave again. Residents arriving in the north told Mondoweiss they were fully aware that barely any structure remained intact in northern Gaza and expected to enter into a new chapter of suffering. They also said that they would not trade what remained of their homes for anything Trump had to offer.
Newly erected tents in the al-Shujai’yya neighborhood in Gaza City, 4 February 2025
“The clear goal of this war is to make as many Palestinians as possible in Gaza homeless, because this destruction is deliberate and planned,” Alaa Subaih, a resident of the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in eastern Gaza City, told Mondoweiss. “The aim is to make us suffer from lack of shelter so that we leave our country and move.”
In direct response to Trump’s statements, Subaih said, “Even if this land is hell, it is my land. I do not want to live elsewhere. I returned to revive and rebuild it.” “If the American president wants to help Israel, the best solution for him is to take all the Israelis to his country, America, not to transfer the owners of the land. We are attached to our land and will not go to any other country. Our country, Palestine, is the most beautiful country on earth,” Subaih added.