Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected US President Donald Trump’s proposal to relocate Palestinians from Gaza as something not “to be taken seriously”, while at the same time stating that Israel should pay for the damage it has caused there and for reconstruction.

Erdogan was slow to respond to Trump’s proposal last week that the Palestinians should be moved out of Gaza ahead of US-led efforts to create a “riviera” of the Middle East. He is hoping for a relaunch of US-Turkey relations under Trump’s second presidency, but his regular wars of words with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu—the first foreign leader Trump invited to visit the White House as his new term of office got under way—are problematic in that regard.

“We do not consider the proposal to exile the Palestinians from the lands they have lived in for thousands of years as something to be taken seriously,” Erdogan said during a visit to Malaysia on February 10, as reported by the Associated Press.

“No one has the power to force the Palestinian people to experience a second Nakba,” he added, making a reference to the mass displacement of Palestinians that occurred during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Erdogan is on a four-day tour of Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan.

He accused Netanyahu’s government of committing “atrocities” that left the Gaza enclave in ruins, saying at a public lecture in Malaysia: “More than 61,000 innocent people have been martyred in Gaza. Schools, churches, mosques and universities were bombed—almost 80% of the buildings in Gaza were destroyed. The financial cost of the destruction in Gaza is about $100 billion. Israel and the Netanyahu government are responsible for this heavy bill.”