Trump stuns with claim US will ‘take over’ Gaza and own it ...Middle East

WASHINGTON DC — Move over, Greenland and the Panama Canal. Now US President Donald Trump has his eyes fixed on Gaza.

At the end of a long afternoon in Washington, that started with Trump outlining his view that Gaza must now be depopulated, and that more than two million Palestinians living there have “no alternative” but to leave the bombed, ruined territory, the American leader made it clear that he wants the United States to take it over.

In the most dramatic proposal any US President has made regarding the Middle East since Israel’s creation in 1948, Trump spoke of co-opting Gaza and turning it into an American territory.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip … we’ll own it”, he told stunned reporters in the East Room of the White House.

US forces, he said, would “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, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area”. 

Which “people” he meant was initially unclear, given that earlier in the day he rejected the idea of offering displaced Palestinians a right of return to the territory after its reconstruction.

Pressed on the matter at the end of the press conference, he said he expected “the people of the world will live there, the world’s people. I think you’ll make that into an international unbelievable place … the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable”.

CNN reporter Kaitlin Collins sought to clarify whether Trump envisaged any Palestinians enjoying life in beachfront property overlooking the Mediterranean. 

“Palestinians also”, said Trump, will have the chance to live there, although they were very much an afterthought in his mind.

As reporters started to take in the magnitude of the President’s proposal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looked like the cat who had stolen the proverbial cream.

Paying tribute to his host, he hailed Trump’s “willingness to think outside the box, with fresh ideas” that would help Israel achieve its goal of securing a Gaza Strip that  “never poses a threat to Israel again”.

“You cut to the chase”, Netanyahu told Trump. “You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say. And after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and they say ‘you know, he’s right’”.

Trump used the cadences of a property developer eyeing the next Dubai to describe his plan. “I do see a long term ownership position”, he said.

“This was not a decision made lightly. Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs…in a really magnificent area”.

Last week in the Oval Office, the President said that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “has tremendous condo capability. He’s got a lot of shoreline”.

It seems that he is now applying exactly the same logic to Gaza, supercharged by his determination that America can seize control of it sooner rather than later.

When Netanyahu was asked whether he sees Trump’s plan as a way to expand Israel’s borders, he sidestepped the question, but spoke of Gaza as being “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”. 

Trump, he said, “has a different idea, and I think … that it’s something that could change history, and it’s worthwhile really pursuing this avenue”.

Central to the President’s proposal is the urgent need to persuade Jordan and Egypt to allow Gaza’s Palestinians into their countries.

Both King Adbullah of Jordan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi have told the President his idea is a non-starter.

He insists they will change their minds, but in the event that they do not, he claimed “there are many leaders of countries…who have reached out and would like to participate in that”. He failed to unmask the nations that he says are willing to accept up to two million new residents.

The other news at the press conference took a back seat to Trump’s bombshell gambit.

But the two men indicated they still hope to see the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia (Netanyahu pledged to “give it a good shot”).

Both men agreed that Iran can never be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapon, but Trump was not questioned about his claim earlier in the day to be “open” to possible direct talks between himself and Iranian leaders. 

As Trump and Netanyahu were meeting, the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations took immediate action to reject the American leader’s call for Gaza to be depopulated.

Riyad Mansour told reporters in New York that if Trump believes Palestinians should be offered a “nice place” in which to reside, he should “allow them to go back to their original homes in what is now Israel”.

In Trump’s inaugural address last month, he praised William McInley, the 25th President of the United States who expanded American territory to include Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

But the President’s new proposal to see the Stars and Stripes flying on a strip of Mediterranean coastline goes far beyond his coveting of the Panama Canal and Greenland.

At a stroke he has challenged Washington’s allies, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer, to consider their response to his unprecedented, destabilising proposal.

He has also signaled to President Xi Jinping in Beijing and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow that the United States is now firmly on an expansionist, imperial path.

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