Donald Trump is fleshing out his idea of taking over the Gaza Strip—but it doesn’t include any long-term contingencies other than carving up the nation to be consumed by other countries in the Middle East.
“The White House press secretary told us last week that you’re committed to rebuilding Gaza. Steve Witkoff said that process would take 10-15 years,” started a reporter in the room, referring to the real estate developer and United States special envoy to the Middle East. “Does your commitment to rebuilding Gaza extend beyond your time in office?”
“I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza,” Trump said. “As far as us rebuilding it, we may give it to other states in the Middle East to build sections of it.”
“We’re committed to owning it, taking it, and making sure that Hamas doesn’t move back,” Trump continued. “There’s nothing to move back into—the place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished. Everything’s demolished.”
“I mean you can’t live in those buildings right now, they’re very unstable, but we’ll make it into a very good site for future development by somebody.”
That somebody could be Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has been eyeing the region for potential real estate projects since at least the beginning of last year. In March, Kushner praised Gaza’s waterfront beachfront property as “very valuable,” advocating at the time for the same plan that Trump touted last week: ethnic cleansing.
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner told Harvard’s Middle East Initiative faculty chair Tarek Masoud on March 8. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
The definition of ethnic cleansing is the mass expulsion or killing of members of an unwanted ethnic or religious group in a society, per the Oxford English Dictionary. Ethnic cleansing has not been identified as an independent crime under international law, according to the United Nations.
“People can come from all over the world and live there,” Trump continued during the press conference Monday. “But we’re going to take care of the Palestinians. We’re going to make sure they live beautifully and in harmony and in peace and that they’re not murdered.”
“This has been the most dangerous site anywhere in the world to live,” Trump added, not mentioning the fact that mass casualties in Gaza have overwhelmingly been by Israel’s hands.
By last week, more than 61,000 Palestinians had been killed in the war with Israel, per the Gaza Government Information Office. Over 15 months of fighting, Israel has cut off access to water, electricity, and food in the region under the banner of rooting out Hamas soldiers behind the October 7 attack. With the aid of American taxpayer dollars, they also decimated hospitals, health clinics, pharmacies, and shelters for millions of people in Gaza. Among those dead are 17,881 children, including 214 newborn infants.
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