Washington (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Donald Trump at the White House Tuesday for crucial talks on the truce with Hamas, as the US president suggested permanently resettling Palestinians from war-battered Gaza.

“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return,” Trump said as he met Netanyahu in the Oval Office.

“Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.”

Trump earlier said Palestinians would “love” his plan to move them out of Gaza and into other Middle Eastern countries including Egypt and Jordan.

Trump has claimed credit for securing the Israel-Hamas truce after more than 15 months of fighting and bombing, and he was likely to urge Netanyahu to move to the next phase of the ceasefire deal, aimed at a more lasting peace.

Netanyahu said “we’re going to try” when asked by AFP how optimistic he was about moving on to phase two.

“That’s one of the things we’re going to talk about. When Israel and the United States work together, and President Trump and I work together, the chances go up a lot,” Netanyahu said.

The pair were later due to hold a joint press conference.

Egypt and Jordan have flatly rejected Trump’s suggestion of moving Palestinians from Gaza.

Gazans have also denounced Trump’s idea. “Trump thinks Gaza is a pile of garbage – absolutely not,” said 34-year-old Hatem Azzam, a resident of the southern city of Rafah.

- ‘Beautiful piece of land’ -

But in a break with previous US policy. Trump doubled down on his suggestion that Palestinians should get a “fresh, beautiful piece of land” in Egypt, Jordan, or other countries.

“I think they’d love to leave Gaza if they had an option,” Trump said in the Oval Office ahead of his meeting with Netanyahu.

Israel said hours ahead of the White House talks it was sending a team to mediator Qatar to discuss the second phase of the agreement.

Palestinian group Hamas said Tuesday negotiations for the second phase had begun, with spokesman Abdel Latif al-Qanou saying the focus was on “shelter, relief and reconstruction”.

Under the first six-week phase of the ceasefire, Palestinian militants and Israel have begun exchanging hostages held in Gaza for prisoners in Israeli custody.

The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, taking into Gaza 251 hostages, 76 of whom are still held in the Palestinian territory including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Families of the Israeli hostages have been urging all sides to ensure the agreement is maintained so their loved ones can be freed.

- ‘Maximum pressure’ -

Trump said he would be pushing efforts towards a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia which froze with the Gaza war.

But they will also be discussing Iran, which backs Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

Ahead of the meeting Trump signed an order reinstating what he called the “maximum pressure” policy against Iran over allegations that the country is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Since the Gaza ceasefire took effect on January 19, Israel has launched a deadly operation against militants in the occupied West Bank’s north.

UN aid agency UNRWA – which is now banned in Israel – warned that the heavily impacted refugee camp of Jenin was “going into a catastrophic direction”.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army said a gunman killed two soldiers before being shot dead in an attack south of Jenin.

Under the truce’s first phase, 18 hostages have been freed so far in exchange for some 600 mostly Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

The truce has also led to a surge of food, fuel, medical and other aid into Gaza, and allowed people displaced by the war to return to the north of the Palestinian territory.

Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory response has killed at least 47,518 people in Gaza, the majority civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN considers these figures as reliable.

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