The world was still reeling Wednesday from President Donald Trump’s stunning proposal that the U.S. “take over” war-torn Gaza, clear the rubble and economically develop the area — after the nearly 2 million Palestinians who live there were removed to other countries.
His bombshell announcement was met with immediate pushback from Arab states and generated countless questions, mainly over whether it would violate international law by seizing a territory by force and displacing its people.
“My initial reaction is, it’s illegal,” Natasha Hall, a senior fellow with the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told ABC News. “That it is harkening back to the days of colonialism and forced population transfers, which we thought were over when the United States and others established the world order that we’ve seen since the end of World War II.”
“This is a nonstarter to begin with,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer now at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy.
Trump revealed his idea during a joint news conference Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he had studied it for months and his decision to go forward wasn’t something “made lightly.”
He said he saw a “long-term ownership position” for the United States in Gaza and they’d “make sure something really spectacular is done.” He said the “world’s people” would live in Gaza after, including Palestinians, though earlier in the day he said he’d support a permanent resettlement of Palestinians elsewhere. Despite that, the White House on Wednesday said the relocation would be “temporary” as the rebuild took place, though officials also say it could take 10 to 15 years to complete.
Trump said he was open to the possibility of sending U.S. troops to Gaza to see it through — “if necessary,” he said — despite his “America First” campaign promise to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars and other entanglements.
The White House on Wednesday made the case that Trump has not “committed” to putting the military on the ground there, but indicated he wouldn’t rule it out entirely in order to maintain leverage in negotiations.
“President Trump is an outside-of-the-box thinker and a visionary leader who solves problems that many others, especially in this city, claim are unsolvable,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
Leavitt, however, didn’t provide many details of how exactly a U.S. takeover would play out. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to soften the impact in the face of widespread backlash, arguing Trump’s gambit was “not meant as hostile.”
Foreign policy experts who spoke with ABC News said it’s unclear what Trump is hoping to accomplish.
“It’s sort of puzzling to me because he definitely wants to have some sort of recognition for the Abraham Accords he did in 2020 but this is the exact opposite thing he should do if he wants to actually see progress in the Middle East. I think he lost yardage here,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute.
Arab states are either openly slamming Trump’s comments or reiterating their belief the only path forward is a two-state solution.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Trump’s pitch represented a “serious violation of international law.” Hamas called on Trump to retract the statements.
Jordan said King Abdullah II stressed “the need to put a stop to settlement expansion, expressing rejection of any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians.” Abdullah is set to meet with Trump in Washington next week.
The U.S. has long pushed for a two-state solution, and Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz told CBS News on Wednesday that Trump’s comments on a takeover did not suggest an end to that decades-long goal.
Waltz said he believed Trump’s takeover proposal could spur diplomacy. “It’s going to bring the entire region to come with their own solutions, if they don’t like Mr. Trump’s solutions,” he said.
CSIS expert Hall said a “generous” view of what Trump is trying to do is potentially push Jordan and Egypt to do more for Palestinian refugees, or aid Netanyahu as the Israeli leader faces a fragile political coalition amid from a far-right members of his government who want to resume war.
But others called it a distraction.
“What it does is it gets us away from thinking about the real problem, which is how we create law and order and stability in Gaza to allow reconstruction of infrastructure to begin,” said Riedel. “That’s the real urgent priority.”
All of this is playing out amid a fragile ceasefire and hostage release deal that is in its first phase. Hamas said on Tuesday that negotiations have begun for the second phase of the deal.
Nathan Brown, a professor at George Washington University and fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Trump’s takeover plan could harden Hamas and “diminishes the incentives for many parties to push it forward.”
The Middle East Institute’s Katulis maintained that Hamas and Israel still have reason to move forward but Trump’s proposal for U.S. control of Gaza is, at the very least, “not helpful” and “distracts from the real issues.”
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