By Michael D. Shear, Peter Baker and Isabel Kershner

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared Tuesday (4) that the United States should seize control of the Gaza Strip and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave, one of the most brazen ideas any US leader has advanced in years.

Hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Trump said that all 2 million Palestinians from Gaza should be moved to such countries as Egypt and Jordan because of the devastation wrought by Israel’s campaign against Hamas after the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “We’ll own it and be responsible” for disposing of unexploded munitions and rebuilding Gaza into a mecca for jobs and tourism. Sounding like the real estate developer he once was, Trump vowed to turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”.

While the president framed the matter as a humanitarian imperative and an economic development opportunity, he effectively reopened a geopolitical Pandora’s Box with far-reaching implications for the Middle East. Control over Gaza has been one of the major flash points of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades, and the idea of relocating its Palestinian residents recalls an era when great Western powers redrew the maps of the region and moved around populations without regard to local autonomy.

The notion of the United States taking over territory in the Middle East would be a dramatic reversal for Trump, who first ran for office in 2016 vowing to extract America from the region after the Iraq war and decried the nation-building of his predecessors. In unveiling the plan, Trump did not cite any legal authority giving him the right to take over the territory, nor did he address the fact that forcible removal of a population violates international law and decades of US foreign policy consensus in both parties.

He made the proposal even as the United States was seeking to secure the Israel-Hamas ceasefire’s second phase, which is designed to free the remaining hostages in Gaza and bring a permanent end to the fighting. Negotiators had described their task as exceptionally difficult even before Trump announced his idea of ousting Palestinians from their homes.

Hamas, which has ruled in Gaza for most of the past two decades and is re-establishing control there now, immediately rejected mass relocation Tuesday, and Egypt and Jordan have rejected the idea of taking in a large influx of Palestinians, given the fraught history, burden and destabilizing potential.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a senior Hamas official, said Trump’s proposed relocation was “a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region”.

“Our people in Gaza will not allow for these plans to come to pass,” he said in a statement distributed by Hamas. “What is needed is the end of the occupation and the aggression against our people, not expelling them from their land.”

Trump waved aside the opposition from Arab countries including Egypt and Jordan, suggesting that his powers of persuasion would convince them.

“They say they’re not going to accept,” Trump said during an earlier meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval Office. “I say they will.”

Netanyahu, sitting at Trump’s side, smiled with satisfaction as the president first outlined his ideas. Later, during the joint news conference, the Israeli prime minister heaped praise on Trump.

“You cut to the chase,” Netanyahu told Trump. “You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say, and after the jaws dropped, people scratch their heads and they say, ‘You know, he’s right.’”

“This is the kind of thinking that will reshape the Middle East and bring peace,” he added.

In his remarks, Trump insisted that Palestinians would quickly warm to his idea.

“I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said. “I heard that Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They live like hell. They live like they’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative.”

He suggested that nations in the region could finance the resettlement of Gaza residents to new places — perhaps “a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” — that would provide better living conditions, either as a single territory or as many as a dozen. “It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return,” he said without offering details of what that would entail.

Asked how many Palestinians he had in mind, he said, “All of them,” adding, “I would think that they would be thrilled.” Pressed repeatedly on whether he would force them to go even if they did not want to, Trump said, “I don’t think they’re going to tell me no.”

Gaza has a long and tortured history of conflict and crisis. Many residents of Gaza are descendants of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes during the 1948 war after Israel’s independence, an event known around the Arab world as the Nakba, or catastrophe. Now Trump is suggesting that they be displaced again, even though the Geneva Conventions — international agreements that the United States and Israel both ratified — bar forcible relocation of populations.

Egypt captured Gaza during the 1948 war and controlled it until Israel seized it, along with other Palestinian territory, in a 1967 war against a coalition of Arab nations seeking to destroy the Jewish state. Palestinians in Gaza waged violent resistance for years afterwards, and Israel eventually withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

But within two years, Hamas, an avowed enemy of Israel that the United States and other nations have designated a terrorist group, took control of the enclave and used it as a base for war against Israel.

For years, Israel blockaded Gaza while Hamas fired rockets and staged terrorist attacks, culminating in the October 2023 operation that killed 1,200 people and led to the capture of 250 more. Israel retaliated with an unrelenting military operation that killed more than 47,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, whose count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

In the weeks since a ceasefire that President Joe Biden’s administration negotiated and that Trump pushed came into effect, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were repeatedly displaced throughout the war have returned to their homes in Gaza to find themselves and their communities demolished. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Middle East envoy, visited Gaza last week and said it would take 10 to 15 years to reconstruct.

“If you had damage that was one-hundredth of what I saw in Gaza, nobody would be allowed to go back to their homes,” Witkoff told reporters Tuesday. “That’s how dangerous it is. There are 30,000 unexploded munitions. It is buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities.”

Picking up on the theme later in the day, Trump said it was not realistic to have Palestinians return to Gaza. “They have no alternative right now” but to leave, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu’s arrival.

“I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative,” he said. “What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.” He added: “I don’t know how they could want to stay. It’s a demolition site. It’s a pure demolition site.”

Trump suggested the resettlement of Palestinians would be akin to the New York real estate projects he built his career on. “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” he said. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza.”

“I do see a long-term ownership position” for the United States, Trump said, adding that “everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.”

Trump’s summit with Netanyahu was his first in-person meeting with another world leader since his return to power two weeks ago. It was part of a multi-day visit to Washington by Netanyahu that was meant to demonstrate the close ties between the two leaders.

Trump and Netanyahu forged a close partnership during the president’s first term but fell out toward its end over a number of issues, including the Israeli leader’s willingness to congratulate Biden on his victory in the 2020 election, which Trump insists he won. Trump and Netanyahu have since sought to smooth over their rift.

But Netanyahu went into the meeting at odds with Trump on several important issues, according to analysts, likely including how to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions and how quickly to end the war in Gaza.

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to see all of the hostages held by Hamas returned and then move on to a grand bargain involving Saudi Arabia that formalizes relations with Israel.

Advisers to Trump told reporters Tuesday morning that the president and Netanyahu were united behind the idea that Hamas should not be allowed to remain in power.

With Netanyahu’s right-wing government in jeopardy if the war ends with Hamas still in control in Gaza, and with no other plan for the area in place, analysts expect the Israeli prime minister to try to delay moving toward a permanent ceasefire.

“Netanyahu made this salami deal,” said Shira Efron, the senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based research group, referring to the three-phase agreement with Hamas. “He’s always playing for time and kicking the can down the road.”

Adding to the anxiety in the region were reports Monday that US intelligence officials believe Iran is seeking to build a cruder atomic weapon that could be developed quickly if the leadership in Tehran decided to do so.

It remains unclear whether that decision has been made, and Iran’s new president has indicated that he would like to begin a negotiation with Trump’s administration even as the country’s nuclear scientists push ahead with their efforts.

Trump on Tuesday signed an order directing a return to the policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran through sanctions but avoided hostile language and refused to say whether he would support an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, an indication of his interest in reaching an agreement. “This is one I’m torn about,” he said as he signed the order. “Hopefully, we’re not going to have to use it very much.”

-New York Times