Trump says US will ‘take over the Gaza Strip’

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said the United States will “take over the Gaza Strip” and promised to rehabilitate the land destroyed after 15 months of war.

“We’ll own it and be responsible,” Trump said, pledging to “create an economic development that will supply an unlimited number of jobs and housing for the people of the area. Do a real job.”

He provided no details on how the United States would acquire the land, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the idea as “something that can change history.”

Trump and top national security aides had spoken earlier in the day about their belief that Gaza was uninhabitable and about a proposal to relocate nearly 2 million Palestinians to other countries.

But his comments during an East Room press conference went much further in expressing a desire to have the U.S. take ownership of a Palestinian homeland soaked in decades of blood and to redevelop it as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

The proposal drew immediate anger from Palestinian supporters.

“This president is openly calling for ethnic cleansing while sitting next to a genocidal war criminal,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on X.

“I feel sad, angry, and scared for our communities,” Layla Elabed, the founder of the political activist group Uncommitted, said in a statement to POLITICO.

The provocative proposal overshadowed discussions of the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that many observers assumed would be the focus of Tuesday’s meetings, Trump’s first visit from a foreign leader during this term. Just weeks after pressuring Netanyahu into accepting the terms of the truce pushed by President Joe Biden’s administration, Trump seemed to abandon the cause of a lasting peace and embrace Netanyahu’s preferred course of action: “to finish the job” of decimating Hamas.

Describing Gaza as a “demolition site” and “hell hole” beside the leader who led the offensive there, Trump spoke like a real estate developer as he clarified to reporters that when he said the U.S. would “own” Gaza, he meant it literally.

“I do see a long-term ownership position, and I do see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East and maybe even the entire Middle East,” Trump said. “Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs.”

The comment had echoes of similar ambitions Trump has expressed about the U.S. obtaining control of the Panama Canal or Greenland, but seizing control of land that’s been the source of centuries of turmoil is even more explosive.

Trump, who aides said is pushing Egypt, Jordan and possibly Qatar to consider harboring Palestinians, made clear that, in his vision, those relocated Palestinians might never return to Gaza, which the president’s advisers suggested would take more than a decade to rebuild after Israel’s 15-month bombing campaign.

“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good,” Trump said. “Why would they want to return? The place has been hell.”

Trump’s casual tone and framing of the matter as one of humanitarian outreach and real estate development ignored the explosive ramifications of forcibly relocating millions of Palestinians whose ties to their land, however ravaged by war, are existential.

“The only reason Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative,” Trump said.

The land has a tumultuous history. At the end of the 1948 war following Israel’s declaration of independence, Egypt was in control of Gaza. It retained that control until the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israeli forces occupied Gaza and the adjacent Sinai peninsula.

Egypt regained the Sinai in the 1978 Camp David accords, but the treaty called for Gaza to become a self-governing territory.

Israel unilaterally withdrew its forces and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but Israel kept a tight lid on the territory after Hamas assumed authority over it. Hamas militants and Israel have been fighting more or less ever since; full-blown war broke out after Hamas’ incursion into Israel on Oct. 7. 2023. Tens of thousands of Gazans died in the subsequent fighting and bombardment.

During an earlier back and forth with reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump suggested that allowing Palestinians to relocate to other countries would give them a fresh state, a means of turning the page on centuries of fighting.

But when asked who, if not Palestinians, he envisioned eventually inhabiting a redeveloped Gaza Strip, Trump seemed momentarily at a loss for words.

“I envision — world — people living there, the world’s people,” he said, adding that “Palestinians also, Palestinians will live there. Many people will live there.”

The abrupt pivot from cease-fire negotiations to such an audacious rethinking of the Middle East offered an ominous signal to those who’d hoped that the six-week cease-fire might serve as the foundation for a more permanent peace. And it marked a notable shift away from diplomacy for Trump, who Biden’s team had credited with playing a constructive role in cementing the agreement just weeks ago.

After threatening in December that there would be “ALL HELL TO PAY” if Israel’s hostages weren’t free by his inauguration, Trump’s rhetoric was more measured on Tuesday when asked how he intended to compel Israel and Hamas to keep making progress toward a lasting peace in a second phase of the existing cease-fire.

“Maybe those steps go forward, and maybe they don’t,” Trump said. “We’re dealing with a very complex group of people, situation and people, but we have the right man. We have the right leader of Israel. He’s done a great job.”

The embattled Israeli leader returned the praise, saying that his distinction as the first head of state invited to meet with Trump at the White House was “a testament to your friendship and support for the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”

He added: “You are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.”

Netanyahu, who has been under pressure from Israel’s far right to resume the bombardment of Gaza to try to further decimate Hamas, praised Trump and expressed a commitment to the return of Israeli hostages, not the fragile cease-fire agreement.

“We have to finish the job,” he said during the press conference where Trump also expressed his support for Netanyahu’s stated goal of eliminating Hamas.

By making Netanyahu the first head of state he hosted at the White House, Trump looked to mend a personal relationship that deteriorated following his defeat in the 2020 election.

Prior to Netanyahu’s arrival at the White House, Trump signed an executive order that reimposed the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran from his first term, an attempt to drive down oil exports to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Telling reporters he was “torn” about signing the memorandum and expressing hope “that it’s not used at any great measure,” the president also responded to a question about the intelligence community’s conclusion that Iran has been plotting his assassination.

Trump said that he’s “left instructions” in the event of his assassination. “If they do it, they’ll be obliterated.”

Targeting Iran, which has long backed the Hamas militant groups in Gaza, served as common ground for the two leaders. And the renewed push to reduce Tehran’s oil exports and impede its pursuit of a nuclear weapon offered the Israeli prime minister, who is under rising political pressure, a significant deliverable to tout back home.