Trump proposes permanent displacement of Gazans as he welcomes Netanyahu to White House
Washington Post
By Matt Viser and Michael Birnbaum
today at 4:40 p.m. EST
President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed moving Gazans to a “good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” in another country, offering a vision of mass displacement likely to inflame sentiments in the Arab world as he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.
Trump’s proposal was likely to provoke a furious reaction from many Palestinians as well as their Arab allies in the region, since it suggested permanently removing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents from Palestinian territory and settling them outside of their land. In saying that the Palestinians would not return to Gaza, Trump did not specify who would ultimately control the territory. But an annexation of Gaza has long been a goal of Israel’s far right, which has sought to fully expel Palestinians from Palestinian territory.
The idea was likely to inflame anger in the region, given the geopolitical context. Gazan residents generally want to stay on their land, and neighboring Arab nations have fiercely opposed handing over land because they do not want to abet an Israeli expulsion of Palestinians.
Trump did not specify where the new land might be found, although he made his comments after repeating his desire for Egypt and Jordan to take in Gaza’s residents. Nor did he appear to grapple with the many Gaza residents who would not want to depart their land or the practicalities of potentially forcing them to leave it.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office ahead of the meeting with Netanyahu. “I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land, and we get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable."
The president suggested that it could be a “piece of land, or numerous pieces of land,” raising the possibility that Palestinians could spread across multiple places, potentially diluting their identity — another idea that would spark anger among advocates for the war-battered territory, which has faced relentless Israeli bombardment for nearly 16 months until a ceasefire took hold just before Trump took office last month.
“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return. Why would they want to return? The place has been hell,” Trump later told reporters. “You take certain areas and you build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, like some place where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re going to end up dying. The same thing is going to happen again."
Trump added that he felt that Gaza’s residents would "love to leave Gaza if they had an option. Right now, they don’t have an option.”
Sitting next to Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the new U.S. president "can help enormously.”
He added: “He brings fresh thinking.”
The two leaders have a complicated history. They were close allies during his first term, with Trump moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. But in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Israeli leader congratulated Biden on winning. Trump then began publicly and privately criticizing Netanyahu.
But Trump’s decision to welcome the Israeli leader as his first foreign visitor suggests an effort to patch the relationship.
Trump’s blunt approach to Gaza’s future stood in sharp contrast with the Biden administration, which spent more than a year taking painstaking, repeated visits to the region to try to devise a reconstruction plan that would satisfy the kaleidoscope of competing interests over the war-battered territory.
Since reclaiming the Oval Office, Trump has repeatedly said that he expects Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza as the territory rebuilds from the war — a process he has said could take 10 or 15 years. Egypt and Jordan have hotly resisted.
Trump and Netanyahu were expected to focus on the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, rebuilding Gaza and normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to senior Trump administration officials. The two leaders planned to hold a series of meetings at the White House, followed by a private dinner there.
Ahead of the meeting, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Turkey — another country that has been involved in brokering an end to the conflict — released a joint statement rejecting any proposal to displace or resettle Palestinians to “countries outside the Palestinian territories, either for short-term or long-term purposes.”
But Trump has vowed to push for it. One of his signature diplomatic tactics in a negotiation is to destabilize both allies and adversaries to gain leverage — as he has with threatened tariffs, for example, on Mexico, Canada and China.
It is unclear whether he has similar aims in his rhetoric on Gaza, but he invited Jordan’s King Abdullah II for a meeting in Washington next week. Egypt, meanwhile, is deeply dependent on the United States for military aid, giving Trump significant power in the relationship.
Both Trump and his Mideast envoy, Steven Witkoff, are former real estate developers, and both have focused on the physical state of Gaza as though it were a redevelopment site.
“In any city in the United States of America, if you had damage, that was 100th of what I saw in Gaza... nobody would be allowed to go back to their homes. That’s how dangerous it is,” Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steven Witkoff told reporters ahead of the meetings on Tuesday. “It is buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities there whatsoever, no working water, electric, gas, nothing. God knows what kind of disease might be festering there.”
Trump, a former real estate developer, last month referred to Gaza as “a phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather,” and added that “some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.”
The visit comes at a difficult moment for Netanyahu, who has faced domestic criticism from members of his coalition for agreeing to a ceasefire, as well as international condemnation for his role in creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump was one part of several days of meetings as he adjusts to a Washington that has changed politically over the past few weeks, with Republicans who are more aligned with him now more ascendant. In addition to meetings with Trump administration officials Monday and Tuesday, Netanyahu is expected to visit with congressional leaders Thursday.
Trump blasted former president Joe Biden for what he said was insufficient support for Israel, though the Biden administration generally backed Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza, which has stretched for 16 months. But despite Trump’s pledges, he and Netanyahu do not see eye to eye about all aspects of the conflict.
Among other issues, Trump favors a swift and final end to the war, and wants to see the second phase of the ceasefire lead to a permanent halt to hostilities. Netanyahu is facing a domestic rebellion from his right-wing coalition partners if he does not resume the fighting in Gaza once the hostages are released as part of the first phase of the deal. The Israeli leader will need to reconcile the differences.
Asked whether Trump wanted to continue to implement the second phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage-release agreement, which calls for the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, Witkoff said Tuesday that “we’re focused on making sure that phase one completes exactly as it should complete, that all the hostages who are part of that deal come home.”
The agreement, which was mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, began Jan. 19 and includes an initial phase of 42 days. Phase-two negotiations are expected to start this week, with some issues still unresolved. The initial ceasefire is supposed to continue even if the second phase is not agreed before the 42 days are up.
“We’re going to try” to get to the second phase, Netanyahu said Tuesday ahead of the meeting.
Over the past two weeks, Hamas and allied militants have released 18 hostages who were abducted in the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, including 13 Israelis and five Thai nationals. Israel has also freed more than 580 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, allowed more aid to flow into Gaza and withdrawn its troops from key military posts in the enclave.
The Gaza Health Ministry says that more than 47,000 people have been killed in the territory since October 2023. About 40 people are believed to still be held hostage in Gaza.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. That was a goal during Trump’s first term, and something that Biden also made a priority.
Trump has also floated traveling to Saudi Arabia as his first foreign trip. Any agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a major breakthrough for the security and economy of the region, building trade ties between the Jewish state and the biggest and most important Arab nation after decades of tensions.
The two countries were close to a deal just ahead of the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 — one that would probably have sidelined Palestinian interests. But since the ferocious Israeli response, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has faced domestic demand that a Palestinian state be part of any agreement with Israel.
That would be a step that Netanyahu has spent his career trying to avoid, and that many Israelis now reject.
Asked whether Saudi leaders had made a two-state solution a demand in discussions about a normalization deal, Trump said “no” on Tuesday. But Biden administration officials said that it was a key need for Saudis in their negotiations prior to Jan. 20.
Trump and Netanyahu will also discuss how to handle Iran, which both U.S. and Israeli officials believe is at its weakest point in years after major damage Israel has inflicted on its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and the separate collapse of Iran’s greatest ally in the region, the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Tehran has been left without most of the tools it has used for decades to exert power throughout the Middle East.
That vulnerability could provide an opening to some sort of deal with the United States and the international community, should Trump choose to take it. But it also makes Tehran more of a target for Iran hawks in both Israel and Washington, and could spur Iranian leaders to go forward in their efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, policymakers said.
Ahead of the meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order that reimposed “maximum pressure” on Iran, a first-term policy that imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Tehran’s economy in a bid to deter it from pursuing nuclear weapons.
“It’s very tough on Iran,” Trump said. “Hopefully we are not going to have to use it very much.”
Trump also signed an executive order pulling the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the U.N. agency that provides aid to Gaza, which Israel has criticized as working in coordination with Hamas. The decision is mostly symbolic after Congress last year pulled funding for the group.
By Matt Viser and Michael Birnbaum
today at 4:40 p.m. EST
President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed moving Gazans to a “good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” in another country, offering a vision of mass displacement likely to inflame sentiments in the Arab world as he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.
Trump’s proposal was likely to provoke a furious reaction from many Palestinians as well as their Arab allies in the region, since it suggested permanently removing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents from Palestinian territory and settling them outside of their land. In saying that the Palestinians would not return to Gaza, Trump did not specify who would ultimately control the territory. But an annexation of Gaza has long been a goal of Israel’s far right, which has sought to fully expel Palestinians from Palestinian territory.
The idea was likely to inflame anger in the region, given the geopolitical context. Gazan residents generally want to stay on their land, and neighboring Arab nations have fiercely opposed handing over land because they do not want to abet an Israeli expulsion of Palestinians.
Trump did not specify where the new land might be found, although he made his comments after repeating his desire for Egypt and Jordan to take in Gaza’s residents. Nor did he appear to grapple with the many Gaza residents who would not want to depart their land or the practicalities of potentially forcing them to leave it.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office ahead of the meeting with Netanyahu. “I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land, and we get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable."
The president suggested that it could be a “piece of land, or numerous pieces of land,” raising the possibility that Palestinians could spread across multiple places, potentially diluting their identity — another idea that would spark anger among advocates for the war-battered territory, which has faced relentless Israeli bombardment for nearly 16 months until a ceasefire took hold just before Trump took office last month.
“It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn’t want to return. Why would they want to return? The place has been hell,” Trump later told reporters. “You take certain areas and you build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, like some place where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re going to end up dying. The same thing is going to happen again."
Trump added that he felt that Gaza’s residents would "love to leave Gaza if they had an option. Right now, they don’t have an option.”
Sitting next to Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the new U.S. president "can help enormously.”
He added: “He brings fresh thinking.”
The two leaders have a complicated history. They were close allies during his first term, with Trump moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. But in the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Israeli leader congratulated Biden on winning. Trump then began publicly and privately criticizing Netanyahu.
But Trump’s decision to welcome the Israeli leader as his first foreign visitor suggests an effort to patch the relationship.
Trump’s blunt approach to Gaza’s future stood in sharp contrast with the Biden administration, which spent more than a year taking painstaking, repeated visits to the region to try to devise a reconstruction plan that would satisfy the kaleidoscope of competing interests over the war-battered territory.
Since reclaiming the Oval Office, Trump has repeatedly said that he expects Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza as the territory rebuilds from the war — a process he has said could take 10 or 15 years. Egypt and Jordan have hotly resisted.
Trump and Netanyahu were expected to focus on the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, rebuilding Gaza and normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to senior Trump administration officials. The two leaders planned to hold a series of meetings at the White House, followed by a private dinner there.
Ahead of the meeting, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Turkey — another country that has been involved in brokering an end to the conflict — released a joint statement rejecting any proposal to displace or resettle Palestinians to “countries outside the Palestinian territories, either for short-term or long-term purposes.”
But Trump has vowed to push for it. One of his signature diplomatic tactics in a negotiation is to destabilize both allies and adversaries to gain leverage — as he has with threatened tariffs, for example, on Mexico, Canada and China.
It is unclear whether he has similar aims in his rhetoric on Gaza, but he invited Jordan’s King Abdullah II for a meeting in Washington next week. Egypt, meanwhile, is deeply dependent on the United States for military aid, giving Trump significant power in the relationship.
Both Trump and his Mideast envoy, Steven Witkoff, are former real estate developers, and both have focused on the physical state of Gaza as though it were a redevelopment site.
“In any city in the United States of America, if you had damage, that was 100th of what I saw in Gaza... nobody would be allowed to go back to their homes. That’s how dangerous it is,” Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steven Witkoff told reporters ahead of the meetings on Tuesday. “It is buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities there whatsoever, no working water, electric, gas, nothing. God knows what kind of disease might be festering there.”
Trump, a former real estate developer, last month referred to Gaza as “a phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather,” and added that “some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.”
The visit comes at a difficult moment for Netanyahu, who has faced domestic criticism from members of his coalition for agreeing to a ceasefire, as well as international condemnation for his role in creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump was one part of several days of meetings as he adjusts to a Washington that has changed politically over the past few weeks, with Republicans who are more aligned with him now more ascendant. In addition to meetings with Trump administration officials Monday and Tuesday, Netanyahu is expected to visit with congressional leaders Thursday.
Trump blasted former president Joe Biden for what he said was insufficient support for Israel, though the Biden administration generally backed Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza, which has stretched for 16 months. But despite Trump’s pledges, he and Netanyahu do not see eye to eye about all aspects of the conflict.
Among other issues, Trump favors a swift and final end to the war, and wants to see the second phase of the ceasefire lead to a permanent halt to hostilities. Netanyahu is facing a domestic rebellion from his right-wing coalition partners if he does not resume the fighting in Gaza once the hostages are released as part of the first phase of the deal. The Israeli leader will need to reconcile the differences.
Asked whether Trump wanted to continue to implement the second phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage-release agreement, which calls for the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, Witkoff said Tuesday that “we’re focused on making sure that phase one completes exactly as it should complete, that all the hostages who are part of that deal come home.”
The agreement, which was mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, began Jan. 19 and includes an initial phase of 42 days. Phase-two negotiations are expected to start this week, with some issues still unresolved. The initial ceasefire is supposed to continue even if the second phase is not agreed before the 42 days are up.
“We’re going to try” to get to the second phase, Netanyahu said Tuesday ahead of the meeting.
Over the past two weeks, Hamas and allied militants have released 18 hostages who were abducted in the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, including 13 Israelis and five Thai nationals. Israel has also freed more than 580 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, allowed more aid to flow into Gaza and withdrawn its troops from key military posts in the enclave.
The Gaza Health Ministry says that more than 47,000 people have been killed in the territory since October 2023. About 40 people are believed to still be held hostage in Gaza.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. That was a goal during Trump’s first term, and something that Biden also made a priority.
Trump has also floated traveling to Saudi Arabia as his first foreign trip. Any agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a major breakthrough for the security and economy of the region, building trade ties between the Jewish state and the biggest and most important Arab nation after decades of tensions.
The two countries were close to a deal just ahead of the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 — one that would probably have sidelined Palestinian interests. But since the ferocious Israeli response, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has faced domestic demand that a Palestinian state be part of any agreement with Israel.
That would be a step that Netanyahu has spent his career trying to avoid, and that many Israelis now reject.
Asked whether Saudi leaders had made a two-state solution a demand in discussions about a normalization deal, Trump said “no” on Tuesday. But Biden administration officials said that it was a key need for Saudis in their negotiations prior to Jan. 20.
Trump and Netanyahu will also discuss how to handle Iran, which both U.S. and Israeli officials believe is at its weakest point in years after major damage Israel has inflicted on its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and the separate collapse of Iran’s greatest ally in the region, the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Tehran has been left without most of the tools it has used for decades to exert power throughout the Middle East.
That vulnerability could provide an opening to some sort of deal with the United States and the international community, should Trump choose to take it. But it also makes Tehran more of a target for Iran hawks in both Israel and Washington, and could spur Iranian leaders to go forward in their efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, policymakers said.
Ahead of the meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order that reimposed “maximum pressure” on Iran, a first-term policy that imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Tehran’s economy in a bid to deter it from pursuing nuclear weapons.
“It’s very tough on Iran,” Trump said. “Hopefully we are not going to have to use it very much.”
Trump also signed an executive order pulling the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the U.N. agency that provides aid to Gaza, which Israel has criticized as working in coordination with Hamas. The decision is mostly symbolic after Congress last year pulled funding for the group.
