President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening said the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and “we’ll own it.”
Trump said that all Palestinians currently living in Gaza — around 2 million people — should leave and be placed in other countries in the Middle East, among them Jordan and Egypt, while the U.S. develops the territory.
Ministers of those and other Arab countries several days ago flatly rejected the idea of accepting Gaza residents.
Gaza has been decimated during a war with its neighbor Israel, which began with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the terror group Hamas.
“Gaza is a hellhole,” Trump said at the White House during a joint news conference with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The former New York real estate developer later suggested that Gaza eventually could be “the Riviera of the Middle East,” where “the world’s people” could make their homes.
“I do see a long-term ownership position,” Trump said when asked if he envisioned a permanent U.S. occupation of Gaza.
“This could be so magnificent,” said Trump, who argued that his plan could potentially bring “great peace” to the wider region.
Netanyahu, when asked about the U.S. taking over Gaza, said, “I think it’s something that could change history.”
“And I think it’s really worth pursuing this avenue,” Netanyahu added.
Neither he nor Trump identified how the U.S. would have the legal authority to take over and administer Gaza as it re-developed the territory.
Trump’s suggestion that the United States should take over Gaza was a new one for him.
But it comes on the heels of his suggestions that the U.S. buy or take over Greenland from Denmark, that Canada becomes a 51st state for the U.S., and that the U.S. take back control of the Panama Canal.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said Monday.
“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area,” Trump said.
“Do a real job, do something different.”
CNBC has requested comment from the White House about Trump’s plan.
A White House source familiar with Trump’s remarks told NBC News that they were not spoken off-the-cuff, but had been discussed before his news conference with the Israeli prime minister.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Trump’s remarks.
“Gaza belongs to the Palestinian people, not the United States, and President Trump’s call to displace Palestinians from their land either temporarily or permanently is an absolute non-starter,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.
“Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the entire Muslim world have made it clear that this delusional idea is unacceptable,” Awad said.
“If the Palestinian people were ever somehow forcibly expelled from Gaza, this crime against humanity would complete the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians on their own land, spark widespread conflict, put the final nail in the coffin of international law, and permanently scar our nation’s international image,” Awad said.
Trump’s son-in-law, former White House advisor Jared Kushner, last year said there is “valuable potential” for Gaza’s “waterfront property.”
Kushner, whose own family made its fortune in New York area real estate, said at the same time that Israel should move Gaza civilians to the Negev desert, in south Israel.
Netanyahu’s visit to the White House comes as American, Israeli and Arab negotiators begin talks around a second phase of a ceasefire plan for Gaza, which has so far shown promise of ending the devastating 15-month war.
Since the ceasefire began in January, several Israeli hostages have been freed and Hamas has retaken political control of Gaza.
Palestinian civilians who were forced from their homes during the past year of war have also begun to return.
But the question of what happens now in Gaza, politically and logistically, is fraught.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump said he did not think the occupied territory’s inhabitants, which numbered about 2.2 million before the war began, should return to their homes.
“This is a very difficult situation. I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said at the White House earlier. “They’re living like hell. They have no alternative.”
Trump said he was working to convince neighboring countries to accept hundreds of thousands more refugees from the territory.
“The king in Jordan and the general in Egypt will open their hearts and give us the kind of land we need,” Trump said Tuesday evening.
“We’re going to give people a chance to live in a beautiful community that’s safe and secure. And I think you’re going to see tremendous, a tremendous outflowing of support,” Trump said.
″ I can tell you, I spoke to other leaders of countries in the Middle East, and they love the idea. They say it would really bring stability, and what we need is stability.”
— Additional reporting by CNBC’s
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