Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Rejects Trump's Gaza Relocation Plan: Palestinians Should Be Allowed To Return To The Cities And Villages They Were Driven Out Of During The Nakba

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rejected in a February 15, 2025 address at the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia President Trump’s Gaza population relocation plan. He said that the purpose of these calls to uproot the Palestinian people from their land is to distract the world from the war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Abbas stated that if America wants a solution for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, it should allow 1.5 million refugees to return to the cities and villages, where they had lived in 1942.

Abbas: "At a time when we are working, along with the world's countries and international organizations, to stabilize the ceasefire, to provide more humanitarian aid, to [enable] the State of Palestine assume its duties in the Gaza Strip, to help the displaced return to their homes, to secure the basic means of life for our deeply-rooted people in Gaza, and to prepare for reconstruction, we encounter calls to uproot our people from their land, displace them, and violate the sovereignty of other countries.

"The purpose of these calls is to distract the world from the war crimes, the genocide, and the destruction in Gaza, as well as the crimes of the settlers, the theft of Palestinian land, the attempts to annex this land, and the attacks against the holy places, in the West Bank and Jerusalem, perpetrated by the occupation forces and gangs of terrorist settlers, in an attempt to thwart the two-state solution, and weaken the National Palestinian Authority.

"2.3 million Palestinians live in the Gaza Strip, of whom, 1.5 million are refugees, banished from their land in 1948. Since then, they have been subject to over 50 massacres at the hand of the terrorist Zionist gangs.

"The only place... If the Americans want a solution, the only place they should return to are their cities and villages, from which they were driven out during the Nakba, as an implementation of UN Resolution 194, which calls for the return of the Palestinian refugees to their cities and villages, from which they were driven out, and fully compensating them for the damages inflicted upon them."