How many Palestinians in Gaza would voluntarily leave to live in Libya is an open question. One idea administration officials have discussed is to provide Palestinians with financial incentives such as free housing and even a stipend, the former U.S. official said.
The details of when or how any plan to relocate Palestinians to Libya could be implemented are murky, and an effort to resettle up to 1 million people there would likely face significant obstacles.
Such an effort would likely be extremely expensive, and it’s not clear how the Trump administration would seek to pay for it. In the past, the administration has said Arab nations would help with rebuilding Gaza after the war there ends, but they have
been critical of Trump’s idea of permanently relocating Palestinians.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also looked at Libya as a place where it could send some immigrants it wants to deport from the U.S.
However, plans to send one group of immigrants to Libya were stalled by a federal judge this month.
Moving up to 1 million Palestinians to Libya could put far more of a strain on the fragile country.
The
CIA’s most recent publicly available estimate of Libya’s current population is about 7.36 million. In terms of population, Libya absorbing 1 million more people would be equivalent to the U.S. taking in about 46 million.
Precisely where Palestinians would be resettled in Libya has not been determined, according to the former U.S. official. Administration officials are looking at options for housing them and every potential method for transporting them from Gaza to Libya — by air, land and sea —is being considered, according to one of the people with direct knowledge of the effort.
Any of those methods would likely prove cumbersome and time-consuming, as well as costly.
