President Donald Trump has said the US will “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 “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 after the meeting, speaking alongside Netanyahu.
Asked whether he would send US troops to Gaza, Trump said: “We’ll do what is necessary . . . we’re going to take over that place, we’re going to develop it, we’re going to create thousands of thousands of jobs and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of.”
Trump said he anticipated “representatives from all over the world” living in Gaza, “Palestinians also”, he said, adding that he imagined Gaza could be “the Riviera of the Middle East”.
His 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.
Netanyahu, speaking alongside Trump, said his proposal was “worth paying attention to”.
“He sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism,” said Netanyahu. “We’re talking about it. He’s exploring it with his people, with his staff. I think it’s something that could change history.”
Egypt and Jordan have already rejected Trump’s plans to resettle Palestinians outside Gaza after the US president last month said it was time to “clean out” the enclave.
Trump said on Tuesday he believed leaders in Cairo and Amman, which both receive significant amounts of US aid, would “open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done and people can live in harmony and peace”.
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 rattle the US’s western allies, which have long supported a two-state solution to the protracted Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Exactly what American control of the Gaza Strip could look like was unclear on Tuesday evening.
Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior US intelligence official now at the Atlantic Council, said it would “require a probably decades-long commitment of tens of thousands of US troops” and would “bring to the mind both of Arab leaders and the street the unsuccessful US nation-state building in Iraq and Afghanistan”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah will meet Trump next week in Washington to make his case against the resettlement of Palestinians outside Gaza.
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.
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 and enable 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 on Tuesday also signed a memorandum that would direct his government to impose “maximum pressure” on Iran, shortly before meeting Netanyahu, who considers Tehran’s nuclear programme an existential threat to Israel.
The president later said that the order would “enforce the most aggressive possible sanctions, drive Iranian oil exports to zero and diminish the regime’s capacity to fund terror throughout the region”.
US officials described the move as a tool to press Tehran back to the negotiating table to discuss its nuclear programme.
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 the US had “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 $74.15.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has for weeks signalled more willingness to agree 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.
During his first term, Trump mounted a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran, abandoning a 2015 nuclear deal that Tehran signed with world powers and imposing sanctions on the Islamic republic.
In response, Tehran increased its nuclear activity and is now enriching uranium close to weapons-grade level.