Trump’s call for U.S. takeover of Gaza hits wall of opposition
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TEL AVIV — President Trump’s declaration that the United States wants to “take over” the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and permanently resettle Palestinians living there was met Wednesday with a mixture of scorn and disbelief across the region and beyond — but greeted with delight by right-wing allies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump’s vague but far-reaching proposals, unveiled during a White House visit by Netanyahu on Tuesday, were swiftly denounced by critics as a call for ethnic cleansing, in violation of international law.
His plan, and Netanyahu’s quick praise of Trump’s “thinking outside the box,” cast a shadow over a tentative truce in Gaza, which last month temporarily halted a devastating 15-month war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,” Trump said at a joint news conference in Washington with the Israeli leader by his side.
In some respects, the Gaza proposal was in line with Trump’s embrace of startling territorial ambitions, such as taking control of Greenland, making Canada a 51st state and grabbing back the Panama Canal.
But Gaza — marked by decades of bloodshed — is a uniquely volatile addition to the roll call of lands whose sovereignty and assets have come under Trump’s restless eye.
In a statement on the Telegram messaging app, Hamas said Trump’s Gaza stance would “pour oil on the fire.” It called the U.S. president’s statements “hostile to our people and our cause.”
Trump’s failure to publicly push Netanyahu to abide by terms of the cease-fire and move on to cementing the accord’s next phase galvanized fears among families of dozens of Israelis still being held hostage in Gaza that the process would grind to a halt. The next such handovers are scheduled to take place Sunday.
Thirteen Israeli citizens, including some with dual nationalities, and five Thai nationals have been released by Hamas and other militant groups since the cease-fire took hold on Jan. 19, bringing public rejoicing and emotional family reunions.
Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, some serving life sentences for attacks on Israelis, have been freed from Israeli jails in exchange, though celebrations have been muted by an upsurge of violence in the West Bank, where Palestinian officials say Israeli troops have killed 33 people since the start of the truce.
Trump’s contention that the United States should “own” Gaza, using military force if necessary, not only upends decades of U.S. Mideast policy, but appeared to fly in the face of the president’s publicly stated wish for an overarching regional peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia — an accomplishment he has said would merit a Nobel prize.
Even though it was the middle of the night in the region when Trump unveiled his proposals, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry issued an unusual predawn statement in which it expressed “firm, steadfast and unwavering” support for Palestinian statehood — a nonstarter if Gaza’s entire population is dispersed elsewhere.
Trump also applied fresh pressure to Egypt and Jordan, which he has singled out in recent days as venues where displaced Palestinians could be resettled on “good, fresh, beautiful” lands. For both countries, especially Jordan, such an influx would be extremely destabilizing, and both governments reiterated their objections to his latest demands.
Some analysts in the region called Trump’s plan — which he said could lead to the creation of a “Riviera of the Middle East” in the ruined enclave — a recipe for explosive unrest.
“Trump can’t offer a military or political solution, so he looks at Gaza as a real-estate development project,” said Oraib Al-Rantawi, director of the Jordan-based Al Quds Center for Political Studies.
Outside the region, major European allies who awoke to news of Trump’s ruminations on Gaza expressed dismay.
France’s foreign ministry said forced displacement of Palestinians living in the enclave would be a “grave violation” of international law. Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, said Palestinians had a right to “live and prosper in their homelands.” And Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said Gaza “belongs to the Palestinians.”
The scope and scale of Trump’s sometimes-rambling discourse on Gaza seemed to catch even Netanyahu by surprise, although his government has made it clear it expects to reap considerable political benefits from Trump’s return to the White House.
Compared to the president’s rhetoric, however, Netanyahu’s response was almost circumspect.
“He sees a different future for that piece of land,” the Israeli prime minister said. “It’s worth paying attention to this…. It’s something that could change history.”
Netanyahu said when he returns to Israel later this week, he would convene senior security ministers to talk about the next phase of the cease-fire. But Trump’s proposal appeared to ease pressure from Israel’s political far right, which has propped up Netanyahu’s government throughout the Gaza war but was angered by the cease-fire.
Itamar Ben Gvir, whose hard-right party quit the government over what he called a too-accommodating stance toward the Palestinians, said Wednesday that chances he would rejoin Netanyahu’s coalition had gone up significantly.
Another prominent far-right figure, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, praised Trump’s remarks as the “true response” to the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel and triggered the war in Gaza.
More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, by the count of Gaza’s health ministry, with thousands more missing and presumed dead.
Times staff writers King reported from Tel Aviv and Bulos from Beirut.
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