Residents displaced under Trump’s Gaza plan could have right to return, US envoy suggests

Plan for Gaza is not about evicting Palestinians but about creating a better future, Steve Witkoff says

Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at the Future Investment Initiative Institute Priority conference in Miami on February 20. Bloomberg

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President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on Thursday suggested that residents displaced from Gaza under Washington’s plan to empty the Palestinian territory could be allowed back, which the US leader had previously ruled out.

Speaking to Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has previously said Gaza is “very valuable waterfront property”, Mr Witkoff described his recent visit to Gaza.

“I sat in Gaza with a bulletproof vest on looking at the scenery there, Jared," he said. "And I don’t know why anyone would want to live there today. I don’t. It’s illogical to me. Doesn’t mean, by the way, that you can’t have some sort of right to return, if that’s the policy prescription that works for people.”

Mr Trump drew outrage in the Middle East when he said this month that Palestinians would not be allowed to, nor would they even want to, return to Gaza once it is rebuilt because by then they would be happily resettled in a “beautiful” new location.

Mr Witkoff said the plan for Gaza was not about evicting Palestinians but about creating a better future for them.

“When the President talks about this, it means he wants to shake up everyone's thinking, and think about what is compelling and what is the best solution for the Palestinian people,” he told the FII Priority Summit in Miami.

"It's going to take a lot of clean-up and imagination, and a great master plan, and that doesn't mean we're on an eviction plan, when the President talks about this. ... It means he wants to shake up everyone's thinking, and think about what is compelling and what is the best solution for the Palestinian people."

FII is the Saudi non-profit run by the country's sovereign wealth fund, the PIF.