‘We will own it’: Trump wants the US to take over Gaza and redevelop it

Washington: President Donald Trump has declared his intention for the United States to take control of war-torn Gaza and redevelop the land after permanently relocating all Palestinians elsewhere, an idea swiftly rejected by the Arab world and widely described as ethnic cleansing.

In a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, Trump presented an outlandish vision to resettle up to 2.3 million Gazans in “beautiful, safe” new towns in nearby countries, which he said could be paid for by those governments.

Meanwhile, the US would raze, redevelop and repopulate Gaza with people “from all over the world”, including Jews and Muslims, with Trump saying he envisaged long-term American ownership of the 365-square-kilometre territory.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip and do a job with it, too,” he said, and would not rule out using US troops. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site.”

He added the US would level destroyed buildings and “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area”.

Trump, who came to fame as a property developer, said Gaza could become “the Riviera of the Middle East”. But: “You have to learn from history. You just can’t keep doing the same mistake over and over again.

Trump and Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House.Credit: Bloomberg

“Gaza is a hellhole right now – it was before the bombing started, frankly. We’re going to give people a chance to live in a beautiful community that’s safe and secure.”

Trump claimed Palestinians only wanted to return to devastated Gaza because “they have no alternative”. Removing them from the territory would mean “they’re not going to be shot at and killed and destroyed”, he said, while standing beside Netanyahu.

Credit: Matt Golding

The Israeli leader, who became the first foreign head of state to visit the White House in the second Trump presidency, welcomed the idea of a US takeover of Gaza, stressing one of Israel’s key priorities was to ensure it could never again pose a threat to the Jewish state.

“President Trump is taking it to a much higher level. He sees a different future for that piece of land,” Netanyahu said. “I think it’s something that could change history and it’s worthwhile really pursuing this idea.”

The proposal shocked the world, although Trump has floated the idea of “cleaning out” Gaza since becoming president. And last year, his son-in-law Jared Kushner – a real-estate dealer who advised Trump on foreign policy in his first term – remarked that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable”.

Trump earlier suggested displaced Palestinians be resettled in “beautiful” new towns in nearby Arab nations, funded by other countries or unnamed wealthy people.

Many have already returned over the past two weeks following the ceasefire despite the widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure.

“The only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they had no alternative,” Trump said. “If they had an alternative, they’d much rather not go back to Gaza. You can’t live in Gaza right now, and I think we need another location. Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They live like they’re living in hell.”

His latest announcement followed two weeks of chaotic activity, including threatening, then postponing, tariffs on the US’s two immediate neighbours, Canada and Mexico, and many analysts argued the idea to take control of Gaza should not be taken seriously.

A view of an area in Gaza City destroyed during fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas. Credit: AP

But it drew a rapid response from the Arab world, even in the middle of the night. Saudi Arabia reaffirmed its “firm and unwavering” commitment to a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and said this was a prerequisite for any normalisation of relations with Israel.

The kingdom, as well as Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Palestinian Authority and the Arab League had already rejected Trump’s prior pitch to deport Palestinians from their homeland. In a joint statement on the weekend, they said it would “threaten the region’s stability, risk expanding the conflict, and undermine prospects for peace and coexistence among its peoples”.

And Hamas rejected Trump’s statements and called them a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region. “Instead of holding the Zionist occupation accountable for the crime of genocide and displacement, it is being rewarded, not punished,” the terrorist group said in a statement.

Condemnation within the US was also immediate. Former Republican congressman Justin Amash, a Palestinian American from Michigan, said if the US deployed troops to remove Muslims and Christians from Gaza, “then not only will the US be mired in another reckless occupation, but it will also be guilty of the crime of ethnic cleansing”.

“No American of good conscience should stand for this,” he said.

Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen told MSNBC the plan was “ethnic cleansing by another name” and Trump was “throwing a match on an already very volatile region”.

There was plenty of support for the idea within the Trump administration, however. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X: “Gaza must be free from Hamas. The United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again. Our pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people.”

Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina, posted: “Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-a-Lago”, referring to Trump’s Florida resort.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters he would not participate in a running commentary on Trump’s statements, and reiterated Australia’s support for a two-state solution in the Middle East.

Trump claimed he had spoken to Middle East leaders who “love” the idea of the US taking control of Gaza, but did not name them. He also asserted Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah might change their minds about accepting resettled Palestinians, pointing to his apparent success in negotiating concessions from Canada and Mexico after threatening tariffs.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman for Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, said any attempt to displace Gazans or reduce the population of Gaza was unacceptable.

Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told CNN that Trump’s plan to clear out Gaza violated international law and amounted to ethnic cleansing.

“This is a population that has been displaced multiple times over – many in 1948, many again in 1967, many multiple times since 2023,” he said.

“It’s very clear that Palestinians do not want to be displaced and that they want to return to their homes, not just in Gaza but the homes they were kicked out of inside Israel in 1948.”

Meanwhile, Netanyahu heaped praise on Trump, calling him “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House”. He listed Trump’s actions from his first term and the past fortnight, including Tuesday’s announcement the US would withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council and stop funding UNRWA, an agency assisting Palestinian refugees.

“All this in two weeks? Can you imagine where we’ll be in four years?” Netanyahu said. He also praised Trump’s “willingness to puncture conventional thinking” and “think outside the box”.

“I’ve seen you do this many times,” he said. “You cut to the chase. You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say. After the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and say, ‘You know, he’s right’.”

The occasion marked a return to warm relations for the two men, after Trump criticised Netanyahu while out of office, and a full restoration of the US-Israel alliance after tensions under the Biden administration amid the Israel-Hamas war.

Gaza has been decimated by Israeli bombing and ground warfare for 15 months, and local health authorities estimated more than 46,000 people were killed. It followed Hamas’ October 2023 attack in which terrorists slaughtered 1200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostages, some of whom are still being held.

But it was not just this latest chapter of violence that rendered Gaza uninhabitable, Trump said. “You look over the decades, it’s all death in Gaza,” he said. “It has happened over and over again, and it’s going to happen again as sure as you’re standing there.”

with AP, Zach Hope

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