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However, the Palestinian leadership condemned the plan in a statement issued on Wednesday.
“These calls represent a serious violation of international law,” President Abbas said, adding that “peace and stability will not be achieved in the region without the establishment of a Palestinian state”.
Abbas leads Hamas rivals Fatah and governs parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
He declared that Palestinians would not “give up their land, rights, and sacred sites” and that “the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the land of the State of Palestine, along with the West Bank and East Jerusalem”.
Hamas – which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the UK and other countries – said in a statement that Trump was “aiming for the United States to occupy the Gaza Strip”.
It warned that his proposal was “aggressive to our people and cause, won’t serve stability in the region and will only put oil on the fire”.
Palestinians in Gaza also said the plan was completely out of the question.
“We have endured nearly a year and a half of bombings and destruction, yet we remain in Gaza,” one man told BBC Arabic.
“We would rather die in Gaza than leave it. We will stay here until we rebuild it. Trump can do as he pleases, but we firmly reject his decisions.”
Under international law, attempts to forcibly transfer populations are strictly prohibited.
Palestinians also fear a repeat of the “Nakba”, or “catastrophe”, when hundreds of thousands fled or were driven from their homes during the war that followed the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
Many of those refugees ended up in Gaza, where they and their descendants make up three quarters of the population. Another 900,000 registered refugees live in the West Bank, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war along with Gaza, while 3.4 million others live in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the UN.
Israel unilaterally withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, though it retained control of its shared border, airspace and shoreline, giving it effective control of the movement of people and goods. The UN still regards Gaza as Israeli-occupied territory because of the level of control Israel has.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said the kingdom “unequivocally rejected” Trump’s proposal for post-war Gaza and reiterated that it would continue its efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state and “not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without that”.
“Achieving lasting and just peace is impossible without the Palestinian people obtaining their legitimate rights,” it added.
Following talks in Cairo, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said he had agreed with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa on “the importance of moving forward with early recovery projects… without the Palestinians leaving the Gaza Strip, especially with their commitment to their land and refusal to leave it”.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the relocation of Palestinians from Gaza in any form was “unacceptable”, adding: “It is absurd to even consider it.”
Western governments also expressed alarm about any forced displacement.
France’s foreign ministry said it would “constitute a serious violation of international law, an attack on the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, but also a major obstacle to the two-state solution and a major destabilising factor for our close partners Egypt and Jordan, as well as for the entire region”.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “We’ve always been clear in our belief that we must seek two states. We must see Palestinians able to live and prosper in their homelands, in Gaza, in the West Bank.”
