President Donald Trump is doubling down—in strikingly transactional and inhumane terms—on his stated plan to take over Gaza, force out Palestinians, and block them from returning after the devastating war with Israel.
In a new clip previewing a forthcoming interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, Trump described his widely criticized plan to “own” and develop the Gaza Strip while forcibly relocating two million Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan.
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These latest comments amount to Trump’s doubling down on a plan that the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described as “ethnic cleansing” after Trump first floated it last week at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the White House. Trump’s comments then—that the US would “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”—caused such alarm that administration officials quickly appeared to walk them back. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a subsequent press briefing: “The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza” and that the US wouldn’t pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. Eventually, she conceded that Trump’s proposal was “an out-of-the-box idea.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that if Palestinians were relocated, it would be temporary—but Trump’s latest comments, to Baier, suggest he envisions the Palestinians’ potential expulsion from the land as permanent. (While a reporter asked at last week’s press conference whether or not Trump would support Palestinians returning, he did not answer directly.) Several congressional Republicans, including Trump allies, also raised concerns about the feasibility of the plan—which Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, and Jordan have all rejected.
The doubling down on such a controversial plan makes clear that Trump sees the world through the lens of real estate deals, not morality or international law, writes Noah Lanard. His rhetoric was in line with that of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has gushed about how Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable.”
