President Donald Trump has said that the US would “take over” the Gaza Strip and that Palestinians should permanently leave the enclave in the strongest indication yet that he wants the 2.2mn population resettled in countries such as Egypt and Jordan.
Speaking as he held talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said that “all” Palestinians in Gaza should “be resettled”.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,” he said.
Asked whether he would send American troops to Gaza, Trump said, “We’ll do what is necessary, we’re going to take over that piece we’re going to develop it, we’re going to create thousands of thousands of jobs, it’s something that the Middle East is going to be very proud of.”
Trump’s proposal would upend decades of US policy and fuel outrage across the Arab world, where Washington’s allies have long warned against the forced displacement of Palestinians.
Egypt and Jordan have already rejected Trump’s plans to resettle Palestinians outside of Gaza after the US president last month said it was time to “clean out” the enclave.
Arabs view such moves as akin to 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced from their homes or fled in the fighting that accompanied Israel’s founding. Palestinians refer to that period as the Nakba, or catastrophe.
The forced displacement of Palestinians would also rattle the US’s western allies, which have long supported a two-state solution to the protracted Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
But Trump doubled down on Tuesday, describing Gaza as a “demolition site”, and saying he expected Cairo and Amman, both of which receive large amounts of US aid, to accept Palestinians.
Jordan’s King Abdullah will meet with Trump next week in Washington to make his case against the proposal.
Israel has reduced much of the densely populated strip to a rubble strewn wasteland since it launched a ferocious retaliatory offensive after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack, with Israeli forces bombing Gaza from the air, land and sea.
Arab and European powers hope a fragile ceasefire and hostage deal between Israel and the Palestinian militant group will lead to a permanent end to the war that would enable the reconstruction of the strip to begin.
But Trump said: “If we can find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area . . . I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had just decades and decades of death.”
Trump and Netanyahu were expected to discuss the Gaza ceasefire as well as Iran and its nuclear programme.
Shortly before meeting Netanyahu, who considers Tehran’s nuclear programme an existential threat to Israel, Trump signed a memorandum that would direct his government to impose “maximum pressure” on Iran.
US officials described the move as a tool to press Tehran back to the negotiating table to discuss Iran’s nuclear programme.
As Trump was signing it, he did not indicate what kinds of sanctions he would use against Iran but said that he would look to speak to the Islamic republic’s leaders about a possible deal to end the nuclear crisis.
“We will see whether or not we can arrange or work out a deal with Iran and everybody can live together,” he said.
Trump said he was “unhappy” to sign the memorandum but had no choice. “It’s very simple. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
As part of the effort, Trump indicated he was seeking to curb Iran’s oil exports, saying that the US has “the right” to block the sale of Iranian crude to other nations.
Brent crude futures traded around $76 a barrel after the memorandum was signed, well above Tuesday’s low of around $74.15.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has for weeks signalled more willingness to agree to a negotiated settlement to secure sanctions relief and ease domestic economic pressure.
His government has also made clear it wants to avoid military confrontation with the US and Israel.
Trump mounted a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran in his first term as president after abandoning a 2015 nuclear deal that Tehran signed with world powers. US sanctions were imposed on the Islamic republic.
In response, Tehran ramped up its nuclear activity and it is now enriching uranium close to weapons-grade level.
Trump’s sanctions against Iran remained in place during Joe Biden’s administration, but analysts said it did not implement them as strictly as it sought to revive the nuclear accord with Iran and ease the crisis.
Netanyahu has made clear his government wants to keep up the pressure on Iran after more than a year of conflict between Israel and Tehran-backed militants following Hamas’s attack on the Jewish state.
Last year, Israel and Iran twice traded direct missile fire against each other as their long-running shadow war burst into the open. Netanyahu claimed that Israeli strikes destroyed much of Iran’s air defences.
Israel also dealt a series of devastating blows to Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant group and Iran’s most important proxy, and many experts said the Islamic republic is at its most vulnerable in decades.
Netanyahu has long vowed to prevent Iran developing a nuclear weapon, and may seek US support to launch more strikes against the republic, according to analysts.
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