WASHINGTON, Feb 5 — President Donald Trump said the US would take over the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and develop it economically after Palestinians are resettled elsewhere, moves that would shatter decades of US policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trump unveiled his surprise plan, without providing specifics, at a joint press conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The announcement followed Trump's shock proposal earlier yesterday for the permanent resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave — where the first phase of a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire is in effect — a "demolition site".
"The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too," Trump told reporters. "We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site."
"If it's necessary, we'll do that, we're going to take over that piece, we're going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it'll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of," Trump added.
Asked who would live there, Trump said it could become a home to "the world's people".
Trump touted the narrowstrip as having the potential to be “The Riviera of the Middle East”.
Netanyahu, whose military had engaged in more than a year of fierce fighting with Hamas militants in Gaza, said Trump was "thinking outside the box with fresh ideas” and was "showing willingness to puncture conventional thinking".
Some foreign policy experts have suggested Trump sometimes takes an extreme position to set the parameters for future negotiations. In his first term, Trump at times issued what were seen as over-the-top foreign policy pronouncements, many of which he never implemented.
Yesterday, Trump did not directly respond to a question of how and under what authority the US can take over and occupy Gaza, home to around two million people with a long, violent history over control of the coastal strip.
The US taking a direct stake there would run counter to decades of policy in Washington and much of the international community, which has held that Gaza would eventually be part of a Palestinian state that includes the occupied West Bank.
— Reuters
