President Donald Trump on Tuesday pushed for a takeover of Gaza and developing it for business — just under a year after his son-in-law Jared Kushner made a similar suggestion.
“Gaza’s waterfront property, it could be very valuable,” Kushner said during a February 15, 2024, conversation with Tarek Masoud of the Harvard University Middle East Initiative. “I think from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.”
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we’ll do a job with it, too. We’ll own it,” Trump said as he stood next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a joint news conference at the White House on Tuesday. “We’re gonna develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs.”
“We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal,” he added. “And I don’t wanna be cute, I don’t wanna be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Trump went on to say he wants Jordan and Egypt to help relocate Palestinians, and his proposal would include the deployment of U.S. troops to create a “long-term ownership position” for the United States.
It’s not clear how the U.S. would undertake such a massive project — the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip would take billions of dollars and likely stretch beyond Trump’s time in office, given the massive amount of rubble that still needs to be cleaned up from the damage caused by Israeli airstrikes. And it’s not clear whether Trump wants to move all Palestinians out of Gaza — a proposal that critics liken to ethnic cleansing. Earlier in the day on Tuesday, Trump indicated he wants to move all Palestinians from Gaza and onto new land, but in his news conference later in the day he said he wants Palestinians to live in a redeveloped Gaza Strip along with “world’s people.”
