Trump's idea to relocate Palestinians from Gaza could worsen humanitarian crisis: Experts

President Donald Trump made headlines this week when he suggested that Gaza's entire population be relocated from the strip.

Trump's comments came as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, during which he proposed that "various domains" be built in other countries that "will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza, ending the death and destruction and, frankly, bad luck."

Later, he added, "The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative."

International aid and foreign policy experts told ABC News that Gaza is still undergoing a humanitarian crisis with an inadequate food and clean water supply, a hospital system on the brink of collapse, people living in makeshift tents and hundreds of thousands in need of psychosocial support.

They said forcibly displacing people may only worsen the humanitarian crisis and put the physical and mental health of Gazans at even greater risk than it is currently.

With thousands suffering from injuries and malnutrition rising — and no plans from the Trump administration on how these issues would be addressed under a relocation — the experts told ABC News there will still be a humanitarian crisis among Palestinians, just in a different location. The only way to address health and medical needs, they say, is for aid to be flooded into Gaza.

"The Trump administration has been trying to portray this as sort of a humanitarian solution, that the means for sustaining life are no longer available inside Gaza," Annelle Sheline, a research fellow at the foreign policy think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told ABC News.

"The idea that it would be facilitating better outcomes for Palestinians to displace them and remove them at a time when they have such extreme needs," she continued. "Framing this as somehow in their own interests, or as a humanitarian solution, as opposed to allowing them to go back to where their homes were, and surging assistance to them and allowing them to try to rebuild and providing them the resources to do so is ludicrous."

Rebuilding the health care system

Over the course of the Israel-Hamas war, Gaza has seen a near collapse of its health care system with hospitals destroyed and medical workers treating patients despite a lack of supplies.

There are currently 36 hospitals and 11 field hospitals in Gaza, according to data provided to ABC News by the World Health Organization (WHO).

As of Jan. 7, the only fully functioning hospitals remaining are seven field hospitals, all located in either central or southern Gaza, according to the WHO.

Of the remaining hospitals and field hospitals, 20 are partially functioning, with the remaining 20 being non-functioning.

The lack of medical care has made it difficult to care for not only the more than 111,000 that have been injured, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, but also for newborns, pregnant women, cancer patients and those with chronic diseases, said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, an international NGO.

He said that urgent medical evacuations are necessary for those who need life-saving care they cannot receive in Gaza, but that the focus needs to be on rebuilding the health care sector and meeting Gazans where they are to receive medical care.

"The real focus has to be on solutions that save the lives of Palestinians ... allowing medical professionals and others into Gaza to help boost the capacity of the health care system, allowing for rebuilding and reconstruction, allowing in not just humanitarian aid but also other critical medical supplies and other goods that are necessary to kind of rebuild and reestablish the health care sector," Shakir told ABC News. "Not following through, it's life or death for Palestinians."

Increasing food aid, rebuilding water supply

Experts say Gazans have been reliant on humanitarian aid throughout the war, and even further back, but not enough aid has been coming in to meet the population's needs.

Israel said it would increase the number of aid trucks being let into Gaza each day, under the ceasefire agreement, but humanitarian groups say distributing this aid is difficult due to roads that have been destroyed and unexploded ordinances.

An October 2024 report from the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification initiative, backed by the United Nations, found that the risk of famine "persists" across the whole strip and the territory was classified as facing "emergency" levels of food insecurity. Additionally, 60,000 cases of acute malnutrition are expected by April 2025.

Gazans are also facing dehydration with 70% of critical water infrastructure damaged or destroyed throughout the war, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Shakir said the focus needs to be on scaling up aid as well as restoring and repairing basic services, including water and electricity infrastructure. He added that displacing Gazans potentially puts people in need of food and water in danger of facing a similar situation, just in a different location.

"Refuge does not always mean that you have your basic humanitarian situation improve," Shakir said. "Conditions can very much vary, but that's sort of besides the point, irrespective of whether or not Palestinians in Gaza might have, better access to health or food or water. You know that that just depends on other factors. But ultimately, international law is clear that permanent force-displacement is not allowed."

Sheline, a former foreign affairs officer at the U.S. State Department, agrees and said she has seen concerning comments from people such as Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner about bulldozing an area of the Negev desert in southern Israel and placing Gazans there.

She said this idea conjures images of a long-term refugee camp with "far worse circumstances" than those that existed in Gaza prior to the war.

"Their vision of what that would entail would be simply a refugee camp, in the desert somewhere ostensibly in Jordan or Egypt,' she said. "The fundamental question here isn't just that Palestinians need access to the means of survival, which they absolutely do, but Palestinians remain committed to the project of the State of Palestine."

"And so simply removing them, even if they were to be placed somewhere that hopefully would meet some of their basic human needs and health needs, and education, et cetera. that that would not be enough, because these are people who have a right to self-determination and have been fighting for years to have their own state," Sheline added.