Donald Trump‘s bold plan to have the U.S. take over Gaza and transform it from rubble into a Middle East ‘Riviera’ is sparking fears from foreign policy experts who warn it could lead to a bloody occupation if it actually took place.
Trump’s ambitious comments about the U.S. seizing an ‘ownership position’ in the territory – even by sending troops if necessary – had lawmakers and analysts wondering if his vision would plunge the nation into the potentially bloody role of occupying power amid an intractable conflict.
Although Trump said Middle East leaders ‘love’ the idea and that the 1.8 million Gazans he estimated would be relocated to other countries would embrace it, there was evidence that the proposal was not fully cooked when Trump floated it at a press conference.
‘I think everybody wants to see peace in the region,’ Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, told Fox News.
‘And peace in the region means a better life for the Palestinians. A better life is not necessarily tied to the that you’re in today. A better life is about better opportunity, better financial conditions, better aspirations for you and your family.
The immediate reaction among Palestinians and leaders across the region was one of ‘revulsion,’ said Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert who advised secretaries of state across multiple administrations of both parties.
‘The question is whether or not this is Trump disrupting, or is this tethered to a an actual strategy. And I would argue this is the reflection of a very unserious man. He’s thinking with the opportunistic sensibility of a real estate developer,’ he told DailyMail.com.
Miller did allow for the possibility Trump’s position could help Israeli PM Netanyahu hold his coalition together during ‘phase two’ hostage talks by giving him ‘ammunition to use against his right wing as to why they should stay in the deal.’
Even political allies of Trump like South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham were offering faint praise for an ‘interesting proposal’ – after backing his most controversial cabinet nominees.
‘I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. It might be problematic,’ Graham said, Jewish Insider reported.
President Donald Trump’s plan to have the U.S.
‘All they see is death and destruction and rubble and and demolish buildings falling all over,’ Trump said. He said it could be turned into a ‘magnificent area’
Trump made the proposal just hours after once again condemning the expense of American blood and treasure in the Iraq War – a key plank of his election campaigns.
Among those ridiculing the proposal was the Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour, who referenced Trump’s pitch to remake a ‘good, fresh, beautiful piece of land’ smack on the Mediterranean coast.
‘For those that want to send them to a happy, nice place let them go back to their original homes inside Israel,’ he said.
‘The United States would have to invade Gaza, expel Hamas, and conduct counterinsurgency operations. This is another war in the Middle East’ is how CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria described the plan.
There was also disbelief inside the East Room of the White House. ‘This is nuts,’ said one reporter after Trump proposed the plan.
Although Trump himself acknowledged the utter devastation in Gaza and blocks of rubble, his comments made little accommodation to the massive security concerns and epic scale of the rebuild.
President Donald J Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu of Israel hold a news conference in the East Room of the White House
The immediate reaction was one of ‘revulsion’ among Palestinians and leaders across the region, said Middle East expert Aaron David Miller
Israel, in the days after the October 7 attacks, drew attention to the sprawling network of tunnels that Hamas built underground in Gaza to hide weapons caches and later abduct hostages for more than a year, with many still awaiting release in a ‘Phase two’ deal.
The impact on those fragile talks was still being assessed Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
‘I think he is just making things up off the cuff. Most certainly there is no plan behind this,’ Brian Katulis, a senior fellow for US foreign policy at the Middle East Institute, told Reuters.
‘And if there is it is not a plan that has any connection to reality in today’s Middle East, and certainly not in any consultations with the Palestinians or neighboring countries like Egypt and Jordan.’
Gaza has long been considered a key part of any solution to the long conflict as part of a future Palestinian state that would include the occupied West Bank.
Hamas leaders, though suffering heavy losses after being hunted down after the bloody October 7 attack on Israel, were calling the proposal ‘racist’ and a recipe for ‘chaos.’
Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told the Gaza-based Shehab News Agency the plan was a ‘recipe for chaos and regional tensions.’
He said Gaza residents ‘will not allow such plans to be implemented’ and said ‘what is needed is an end to the occupation and aggression against the Palestinians, not their expulsion from their land.’
‘Trump is taking it to a much higher level,’ said Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu
Trump stressed Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline
As Trump described it, the plan would be a massive redevelopment and jobs proposal. ‘I don’t want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East … this could be so magnificent,’ Trump said.
And his team touted it as a way to shake up the status quo. ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, expecting a different result. Peace— truly lasting peace— is the ultimate goal. And it can only happen with this President,’ posted White House communications director Steven Cheung.
But Trump’s comments only hinted at the physical threats that could accompany the undertaking – from unexploded ordinance to contending with defiant Palestinians who consider Gaza their home despite Trump’s call to move them to live in a ‘much better situation’ elsewhere.
‘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,’ Trump said.
He said the U.S. would ‘create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.’
Trump, who still oversees a golf, hotel and branding empire, said the project would be ‘done world class’ and said when pressed that ‘the world’s people’ would live there, then adding that Palestinians would be included.
Egypt and Jordan, a small country which already has about 3 million Palestinians in its territory, have rejected the idea of accepting the mass of people Trump would send out of Gaza.
Trump has rejected their rejection. ‘They say they’re not going to accept. I say they will,’ Trump said Tuesday at the White House.
Trump continues to blast the U.S. decision to fight the Iraq War
‘Egypt has to be extremely careful for its security and its politics, and has proven extremely hard over when it comes to absorbing any Palestinians,’ said Miller, questioning how either Egypt or Jordan could handle a ‘forced transfer’ of Palestinians.
Some critics are even calling the proposal a form of ‘ethnic cleansing.’
‘He just said that it will be US policy to forcibly displace two million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. That is ethnic cleansing by another name,’ said Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen Tuesday on MSNBC.
‘To state the obvious, U.S. occupation of Gaza would require the United States to perpetrate wholesale ethnic cleansing and subject our forces to an unrelenting urban insurgency,’ wrote Ned Price, former State Department spokesperson under the Biden administration.
‘This president is openly calling for ethnic cleansing while sitting next to a genocidal war criminal,’ fumed Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Palestinian-American member of the ‘squad.’
‘He’s perfectly fine cutting off working Americans from federal funds while the funding to the Israeli government continues flowing.’
Other Democrats pressed the idea that Trump could be proposing the controversial idea to distract from his efforts to purge the bureaucracy, with U.S.A.I.D. suddenly placing workers on leave and calling them home from far-flung international locales.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, who was beaming while Trump did most of the talking during their press conference, got behind the idea.
‘Trump is taking it to a much higher level,’ he said.
