It may be remembered as Donald Trump’s modest proposal. “The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it, too,” America’s president announced in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday evening in front of a stunned international press gathering.
His guest, Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, looked across at his host, his features fluctuating between delight and amusement.
Trump’s vision to end the decades of conflict in Gaza is simple: to superimpose the principles of a Floridian property deal on one of the most politically complex and historically freighted places on Earth by relocating the current occupants – the 2.1 million Palestinians to whom it is home – elsewhere; razing the bombed-out and condemned buildings and then reimagining the place as somewhere beautiful, with a glittering waterfront vista.
“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out and create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area, do a real job, do something different ...”
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Responding to questions from reporters, Trump said everyone he had spoken to “loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing it and creating thousands of jobs”. It was an idea that had got “tremendous praise” from the “highest levels of leadership”.
Asked who would live in Gaza if his proposal took effect, he replied: “I’d envision the world’s people living there.
“I think you’ll make that into an international, unbelievable place. I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable. And I think the entire world, representatives from all over the world will be there. Palestinians also, Palestinians will live there. Many people will live there. But they’ve tried the other – they’ve tried it for decades and decades and decades. It’s not going to work, it didn’t work, it will never work. And you have to learn from history. You just can’t let it keep repeating itself.
“We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy but the Riviera of the Middle East – this could be something. This could be so magnificent.
“But more importantly than that is the people that have been absolutely destroyed, that live there now [and] can live in peace and in a much better situation, because they’re living in hell. And those people will now be able to live in peace. We will make sure that it’s done world-class.
“It’ll be wonderful for the people. Palestinians mostly we’re talking about. And I have a feeling that despite them saying no, I have a feeling that the king, in Jordan and the general, president ... in Egypt will open their hearts and give us the kind of land that we need to get this done and people can live in harmony and peace.”
On the surface, it sounded like a pitch for an upmarket gated community or luxury resort rather than the enforced displacement of a people. The breathtaking Gaza proposal dominated what was another day of extraordinary activity around the White House and Capitol Hill.
In the morning, the committee that quizzed Robert Kennedy Jr on his suitability to be health secretary voted to send his confirmation to the Senate by a single vote. In the afternoon, prominent Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren, joined a protest outside the Treasury building against the sweeping powers conferred on Elon Musk.
But the presence of Netanyahu drew the biggest protest to the fenced-off streets around the White House. In the cooling afternoon, the chants carried across the lawn – “Shame on you, shame on you” – as sirens and a motorcade ushered Netanyahu to the West Wing where he became the first foreign leader to be received by Trump since his return to the White House.
The president had said that he was here to listen to Netanyahu, but when the two men sat down for an initial introduction, in front of the blazing White House log fire, the visitor was content to permit his host to do most of the talking.
Trump had earlier floated his radical solution for Gaza in an afternoon Oval Office press briefing. Asked the obvious question – what if the Palestinian people did not wish to leave their land for an as-yet unidentified elsewhere – Trump replied: “I don’t know why they could want to stay. It is a demolition site. If we could find them the right piece of land and build them some really nice places, I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza which has had just decades and decades of death.
“Gaza is a hellhole right now. It was before the bombing started, frankly. And we are going to give people a chance to live in a beautiful community that is safe and secure. I can tell you I have spoken to other leaders in the Middle East and they love the idea.”
Netanyahu knew the diplomatic drill here: flattery and obsequiousness. Turning to Trump, he paid him the highest compliment: “I’ve said it before: I’ll say it again: you are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.”
The Israeli prime minister reiterated the horrors committed by “Hamas monsters” in their attack of October 7th, 2023, and vowed that Israel would “end the war by winning the war”.
Not once, at any stage of the press conference, was the Palestinian death toll mentioned in the East Room. Instead, the Israeli leader told the US president that he had the breadth of vision to fundamentally change the trajectory of the Middle East.
“Ladies and gentlemen, all this in just two weeks,” Netanyahu said in praise of Trump, who has been credited with bringing about the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release agreement.
“Can we imagine where we will be in four years? I can.”
“I believe,” he continued, turning to Trump, “that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking – thinking that has failed time, time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas will help us achieve all these goals. And I have seen you do this many times. You cut to the chase. You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say.
“And after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and say: you know, he is right. He sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism. So many attacks against us. So many trials and so many tribulations. He has a different idea. And it is worth paying attention to it. We are talking about it. I think it could change history and it is worthwhile pursuing this avenue.”
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The Israeli leader was right about the jaws dropping.
How long ago now seems the night of March 7th, 2024, when, after a jubilant State of the Union address in the House of Representatives chamber, Joe Biden was heard, on audio, privately telling his secretary of state Antony Blinken and others: “I told him, Bibi, and don’t repeat this, but you and I are going to have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.”
Whatever that meeting was supposed to be, it didn’t occur. Palestine became an issue of national protest on college campuses across the US throughout the summer, leading to reported instances of anti-Semitism. In the Democratic primaries, a protest vote in the Muslim-majority Detroit suburb of Dearborn flashed an early warning to Biden. It wasn’t heeded.
Trump paid a visit to Dearborn and nearby Hamtramck in the weeks before the election. Muslim Democrats had lost faith in the Biden-Harris doctrine by then and listened when Trump told them he could barter for peace in the Middle East. Kamala Harris drew an estimated 22,000 fewer votes in Michigan’s Arab-American enclaves than Biden had done four years earlier – a quarter of the 80,000 votes that separated her from Trump in Michigan.
“The president is openly calling for ethnic cleansing while sitting next to a genocidal war criminal. He’s perfectly fine cutting off working Americans from federal funds while the funding to the Israeli government continues flowing,” Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wrote on X after the White House press conference.
Elsewhere, Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy posted: “I have news for you – we aren’t taking over Gaza. But the media and the chattering class will focus on it for a few days and Trump will have succeeded in distracting everyone from the real story – the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”
Right now, the Democratic Party is too addled and fractured a political machine, as it scrambles to respond to the new administration’s Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, to mount a cohesive response to Trump’s proposal for Gaza.
But Tuesday’s announcement must rank among the most audacious plans ever voiced by a US president.
There is an unquestionable truth in Trump’s assertion that life has been hellish for Palestinians, and not just for the past year. But the leap from that premise to envisaging US troops entering Gaza and its ultimate transformation into a regional Riviera is breathtaking on multiple levels.
Saudi Arabia was the first to issue an official response: a middle-of-the-night statement reiterating its position that there will be no normalising relations with Israel without a Palestinian state.
Whether Trump’s vision ever becomes anything more than a quickly forgotten mirage on a cold February afternoon, it still comes in the midst of a precarious ceasefire that is due to advance to a second phase, to secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
A statement from Riyad Mansour, the leader of the Palestine mission to the United Nations, made clear the feelings of his people about the idea of moving to some vague, other idyll.
“Our homeland is our homeland. If part of it is destroyed – the Gaza Strip – the Palestinian people selected their choice to return to it. In two days, in a span of a few hours, 400,000 Palestinians returned – walking – to the northern part of the Gaza Strip. I think that we should be respecting the selections and the wishes of the Palestinian people.
“And the Palestinian people at the end will make the determination. They want to clean the destruction in Gaza. They want to rebuild the schools. The hospitals. The roads. The infrastructure. Because this is where they belong and they love to live there.”
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