Abbas confidant: If Trump advances Gaza ‘expulsion’ plan, PA will cut ties with US
Ahmad Majdalani says Ramallah wants to turn page with Washington after bitter first term, is maintaining contacts because it doesn’t see president’s proposal being implemented
RAMALLAH, West Bank — A senior Palestinian official and confidant to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says that the PA will cut ties with the US if President Donald Trump advances his proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and relocate all of its residents.
In an interview with The Times of Israel from his Ramallah office last week, Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Council member Ahmed Majdalani said implementation of Trump’s proposal would amount to the “expulsion” of Gaza’s roughly 2 million residents, thereby posing an “existential threat” to the Palestinian cause.
Pressed repeatedly as to whether such fervent opposition to the proposal meant the PA was prepared to sever ties with Washington again, Majdalani’s response was the same each time: “Of course.”
“Why would we have ties if Mr. Trump sticks to this proposal?” he said.
The longtime PA minister clarified that Ramallah is prepared to work with Trump if he abandons the idea. He also pointed to comments from top aides to the US president who have softened the proposal and suggested they would be open to shelving it if Arab allies came up with an alternative plan for the post-war management of Gaza that removed Hamas from power.
But the plan unveiled on Tuesday didn’t explicitly address this concern, and the White House quickly came out against it, saying it was sticking with Trump’s original proposal.
“We have been listening to Mr. Trump’s advisers who have explicitly said that this is just a proposal — not an obligatory plan of action,” said Majdalani in a rare on-record interview with Israeli media by a Palestinian official.
Still, the fact that he was willing to even entertain publicly the idea of ending ties with the US, just over a month into Trump’s second tenure, highlighted how alarmed Ramallah was by the president’s talk of taking over Gaza.
Trying a different approach
The PA gradually cut ties with the US during Trump’s first term, when he recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and proposed a peace plan that envisioned Israel annexing all of its settlements, while offering the Palestinians only limited sovereignty over the semi-contiguous West Bank land that would remain.
But two senior Palestinian officials who spoke to The Times of Israel ahead of Trump’s return to the White House said Ramallah would take a different approach during his second term, acknowledging that the lack of engagement with Washington led the US to bypass Ramallah completely as it brokered the Abraham Accords normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries.
Abbas restored ties with Trump, sending him a letter wishing him well after the then-GOP presidential nominee survived an attempt on his life last summer. Days after Trump was re-elected, the two then held what interlocutors described as a “warm” call — their first since 2017 — during which the president-elect pledged to end the war in Gaza.
Two months later, Trump played an essential role in securing the ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas that is still holding to date, albeit barely.
Accordingly, Majdalani said Ramallah was caught off guard when Trump weeks later announced his proposal for the US to “own” Gaza and “permanently” relocate all of its residents.
‘Deal of the Century’ flashbacks
Majdalani is one of the closest aides to Abbas, who has appointed him to a string of ministerial posts over the past 20 years. Last month, the PA president tapped him to head a fund that will be responsible for a highly sensitive reform to end controversial stipends to Palestinian security prisoners based on the length of their sentences.
Notably, despite how unpopular it was among Palestinians, Abbas signed the decree enacting that reform days after Trump announced his Gaza takeover idea.
Trump’s proposal was unveiled in a joint press conference with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who immediately welcomed the idea. Majdalani said this was because it fits with what he said is the premier’s effort to annex large parts of the West Bank, thereby destroying the PA and the effort for Palestinian statehood with it.
Majdalani noted that the Arab world has similarly rejected the US proposal, with Egypt and Jordan viewing Trump’s calls for them to take in Palestinians from Gaza as “existential threats” to their national security.
Trump’s idea “is not the right way to achieve stability and peace and security in the region,” he asserted.
The PA rejected Trump’s 2020 peace plan with similar fervor and refused to discuss the initiative with Washington both before and after its rollout.
The plan was largely shelved within months, while Washington pursued the Abraham Accords. Trump’s aides hinted that it could resurface in his second term, but the president refrained from standing by it when asked last month.
‘No normalization with expulsion’
Explaining the decision to re-engage with Trump after a first term that saw the US cut all aid to the Palestinians and shutter their diplomatic missions in Washington and Jerusalem, Majdalani explained that Ramallah is “acting according to the political reality.”
During their November call, “President Abbas expressed a willingness to cooperate with President Trump and his new administration,” said the senior member and faction leader within the PLO — the international umbrella body representing Palestinians, which is also dominated by Abbas.
“We are ready today and tomorrow to positively cooperate with Mr. Trump and his administration, if he renounces and forgets his idea about taking over Gaza and expelling of its residents en masse,” Majdalani said.
That readiness would dissipate completely if the US actually moved forward with the idea. “We will defend our principles and our interests,” he asserted.
Pressed again on why the PA has maintained contacts with Washington, given that Trump has yet to back away from his Gaza takeover pitch, Majdalani said that the US has not actually begun implementing it, calling it “a proposal — not a plan.”
Trump has defended his idea, saying that Gaza is an uninhabitable “demolition site.”
“The question Mr. Trump should be asking is, ‘Who destroyed Gaza and made it uninhabitable?'” Majdalani said, referring to Israel’s 15-plus month bombardment of Gaza aimed at dismantling Hamas after the October 7 onslaught.
“The problem is not the existence of Palestinians in Gaza. The problem is the existence of the Israel occupation in Gaza. So the goal should be to remove the occupation, not the Palestinians,” he said, asserting that only a two-state solution will provide security and stability for Israel and the region.
“If [Trump] thinks that there will be regional peace with Israeli normalization alongside the mass expulsion of Gaza’s residents and the annexation of the West Bank, he is wrong,” Majdalani said.
Asked whether the PA could accept the relocation of Gazans if it was done temporarily and not by force, Majdalani rejected the premise.
“There is no such thing as voluntary emigration… in more accurate terms, it’s ethnic reasoning,” he continued. “For us, it is not acceptable to move the residents of Gaza — not temporarily and not permanently.”
“Gaza is not for sale in the first place. It is part of the Palestinian homeland… and the Palestinians in Gaza will remain on their homeland.”
The other half of the interview with Majdalani about the PA’s recent reform of its controversial prisoner payment policy was published on Tuesday.
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