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‘We’ll Own It’: Trump Says US Wants to Take Over Gaza Strip
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House in Washington, US, Feb/ 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
President Donald Trump said the US would take over the war-torn Gaza Strip and develop it economically after Palestinians are resettled elsewhere, actions that would upend decades of US policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trump unveiled his surprise plan, without providing specifics, at a joint press conference on Tuesday with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The announcement followed Trump‘s shock proposal earlier on Tuesday for the permanent resettlement of the more than two million Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave — where the first phase of a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal is in effect — a “demolition site.”
Trump can expect allies and foes alike to strongly oppose any US takeover of Gaza, and his proposal raises questions whether Middle East power Saudi Arabia would be willing to join a renewed US-brokered push for a historic normalization of relations with US ally Israel.
The US taking a direct stake in Gaza would run counter to longtime policy in Washington and for much of the international community, which has held that Gaza would be part of a future Palestinian state that includes the West Bank.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump told reporters. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.”
“We’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of,” Trump said. “I do see a long-term ownership position and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East.”
Asked who would live there, Trump said it could become a home to “the world’s people.” Trump touted the narrow strip — where, until the recently implemented ceasefire went into effect, Israel had been waging a military campaign in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border invasion and massacre across southern Israeli communities — as having the potential to be “The Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump did not directly respond to a question of how and under what authority the US can take over and occupy Gaza, a coastal strip 25 miles (45 km) long and at most 6 miles (10 km) wide, with a violent history. Successive US administrations, including Trump in his first term, had avoided deploying US troops there.
Several Democratic lawmakers quickly condemned the Republican president’s Gaza proposals.
Netanyahu, referred to a few times by Trump by his nickname, “Bibi,” would not be drawn into discussing the proposal in depth other than to praise Trump for trying a new approach.
The Israeli leader, whose military had engaged in more than a year of fierce fighting with Hamas terrorists in Gaza, said Trump was “thinking outside the box with fresh ideas” and was “showing willingness to puncture conventional thinking.”
Netanyahu may have been relieved that Trump, who forged close ties with the Israeli leader during his first term in the White House, did not pressure him publicly to maintain the ceasefire. He faces threats from far-right members of his coalition to topple his government unless he restarts the fighting in Gaza to destroy Iran-backed Hamas.
Some experts have suggested Trump sometimes takes an extreme position internationally to set the parameters for future negotiations. In his first term, Trump at times issued what were seen as over-the-top foreign policy pronouncements, many of which he never implemented.
A UN damage assessment released in January showed that clearing over 50 million tonnes of rubble left in Gaza in the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas war could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump repeated his call for Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab states to take in Gazans, saying Palestinians there had no alternative but to abandon the coastal strip, which must be rebuilt after nearly 16 months of a devastating war between Israel and Hamas terrorists.
But this time Trump said he would support resettling Palestinians “permanently,” going beyond his previous suggestions that Arab leaders had already steadfastly rejected.
Trump offered no specifics on how a resettlement process could be implemented but his proposal echoed the wishes of Israel’s far right and contradicted Democratic former President Joe Biden’s commitment against mass displacement of Palestinians.
The Saudi government, in a statement, stressed its rejection of any attempt to displace Palestinians from their land and said it would not establish relations with Israel without establishment of a Palestinian state.
Just two weeks into his second term, Trump was hosting Netanyahu at the White House to discuss the future of the Gaza ceasefire, strategies to counter Iran, and hopes for a renewed push for an Israeli-Saudi normalization deal.
Trump described the Gaza Strip as a longtime “symbol of death and destruction” and said Palestinians there should be housed in “various domains” in other countries. He said the US will take over the Gaza Strip, “level the site,” and create economic development but did not say how.
Trump, who had a career of developing real estate before getting into politics, cast a broad-brush, optimistic vision of a US takeover of Gaza while skirting details on how the United States would go about possessing the enclave and securing it.
He was also vague on where the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza would go, saying he was confident Egypt and Jordan would take many of them, despite those governments already rejecting the idea.
What impact Trump‘s proposals have on negotiations over the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal was unclear, as Hamas has adamantly insisted it wants to remain in Gaza while Netanyahu has vowed to destroy the group and never allow it to again rule the territory.
Trump‘s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, played a key role in helping the Biden administration secure the long-sought Gaza deal before the Jan. 20 transfer of power in the US. The first phase has led to Hamas’s release of 18 hostages and Israel’s release of hundreds of jailed Palestinians.
“We’re in Phase 2 now,” Witkoff told reporters earlier. He said he met Netanyahu on Monday to discuss parameters for the policy negotiations and would meet the prime minister of Qatar, a mediator in the negotiations, in the US on Thursday.
The post ‘We’ll Own It’: Trump Says US Wants to Take Over Gaza Strip first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.