Hani Abuelkhair says he’s mourning the loss of roughly 30 family members in Gaza.
“I want to see my family. I want to see my sisters. It’s enough. We lost a lot of people in Gaza,” Abuelkhair said tearfully. “It’s very hard.”
His heartbreak has deepened with U.S. President Donald Trump doubling down on his plans to take control of the Gaza Strip.
“He wants to displace people again. He wants to start ethnic cleansing again, the genocide again,” Abuelkhair said. “This is really confusing. I cannot understand what’s happening.”
Last week, Trump revealed plans to take control of the war-torn territory and rebuild it -- a plan he reiterated Tuesday in a meeting with the King of Jordan.
“We will have Gaza. Nothing to buy. It’s Gaza. It’s a war-torn area. We’re going to hold it, we’re going to cherish it, [and] we’re going get it going eventually,” he said.
Abuelkhair had plans to visit Gaza before the war began, and now he does not know when that will be, especially since the war is on pause.
“I called my sisters; they were panicking as well. I asked if they would leave the north and go to the south and they said, ‘No, not this time because we know they will ask us to move to the Egypt border and we know Trump’s plan is displace us outside Palestine.’ He complicated the situation,” said Abuelkhair.
Abuelkhair hopes things will change and the people living in Gaza will have the chance to rebuild on their land.
“With the ceasefire we thought this would bring peace to the Middle East and now we are again back to square one. I hope the ceasefire will continue. I hope the international world and community will say something about this,” he said.
Robert Huish, associate professor at Dalhousie University for International Development, says Trump’s approach has been met with strong criticism.
“Most people aren’t taking this as seriously as Trump would like them to. There may be some opportunists that see that this is a chance to increase Israeli settlements within Gaza, but the feasibility and practicality of this is really shocking,” he said.
Zina Rakhamilova, an Israeli-Canadian who moved to Israel, said Trump’s plans came as a shock and stirred mixed emotions.
“It’s not that many people want to see Palestinians gone from the region,” she said. “Rather, they want to see new ways to address solutions where diplomacy in the past has failed.”
Still, Rakhamilova said it’s too early to draw firm conclusions.
“There aren’t enough details for us to really understand what’s coming,” she said. “But what we do want to see is terrorism gone from the region.”
Huish critiqued Trump’s approach on the Gaza strip, referring to them as “narrow-minded.”
“He’s talking about creating a riviera, basically bulldozing over Gaza’s territory, displacing people. He’s talking about conquest and he’s talking about ethnic cleansing,” said Huish. “This conversation that he’s bringing to the table is going to only destabilize the region, further continue the pursuit of genocide within the region as well.
“The real thing to keep in mind here is that this sort of proposal by Trump, he might feel that it’s clever [but] it has no basis of improving the lives of people in Palestine or Israel for that matter and if anything, is just an excuse to wash away some of the crimes and some of the need for justice to occur in the Middle East. You can’t simply remove the history, culture and trying experience of the people of Gaza with a resort and a golf course.”
