US President Donald Trump’s proposal to “clean out” the Gaza Strip by moving more than a million Palestinians to neighboring countries has drawn sharp criticism, with opponents condemning it as ethnic cleansing and warning of regional chaos.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement that he wants to “ clean out ” Gaza raised alarm in many quarters, but perhaps nowhere more so than in Jordan. On a Jan. 25 call, Trump pressured Jordanian King Abdullah II to take in many more Palestinian refugees in what would amount to a de facto ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

President Donald Trump said he wanted Jordan and Egypt to take in more Palestinians from Gaza so they could "maybe live in peace" there.

President Trump has suggested that Gazans should be evacuated from the devastated enclave and taken in by Jordan and Egypt.

The Oslo negotiations of the 1990s rejected the notion of removing Palestinians from Gaza. In fact, keeping the refugees in Gaza was central to the premise of a two-state solution. At the same time, questions over the right of refugees to return to their original homelands in what is now Israel were shelved.

Once a critic of nation building, the president now envisions taking over a Middle East enclave, driving out its Palestinian population and transforming it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt Sunday flatly rejected President Donald Trump's suggestion that Palestinians should leave Gaza and resettle in their countries on a "temporary or long-term" basis due to the widespread destruction in the Palestinian enclave from the 15-month war between Hamas and Israel.

Trump said he discussed his vision on a call earlier in the day with King Abdullah II of Jordan and would speak Sunday with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt.

According to the United Nations, ethnic cleansing is not "recognized as an independent crime under international law."