‘He’s lost it’: Trump call to take over Gaza blasted by Democrats, boosted by loyalists
US president’s domestic opposition condemns plan as ‘ethnic cleansing by another name’; Dutch far-right leader Wilders praises idea, says Gazans can ‘move to Jordan’
US President Donald Trump’s declaration on Tuesday that the US will take over the Gaza Strip and resettle its roughly 1.8 million residents elsewhere was welcomed as a “miracle” by members of the Israeli government and endorsed by some of Trump’s most stalwart allies in the US — but rejected as “crazy,” “dangerous,” and “insane” by Democrats, as foreign countries assured the press their positions on the conflict hadn’t changed.
At a joint press conference Tuesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said “the US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” reiterating his point of view that Gaza — which he called a “hellhole” and a “demolition site” — “should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people” and calling for the enclave’s residents to be resettled in other countries.
The proposal — which remains nebulous — would upend decades of American policy on the Middle East. It comes after 15 months of war between Israel and the Hamas terror group in the enclave, beginning on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.
In Israel, ministers of Netanyahu’s government immediately took to social media on Wednesday to praise Trump’s proposal, calling it a “historic morning for the State of Israel” and “the dawn of a new day.”
Culture and Sports Minister Miki Zohar declared: “We have a great Prime Minister and an amazing American President! Thank God for this miracle He performed for the people of Israel.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, of the far-right Religious Zionism party, said: “Together, we will make the world great again.”
Trump administration
Following Trump’s comments, members of his administration lined up to support the proposal.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on X, “Gaza MUST BE FREE from Hamas. The United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again. Our pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people.”
Gaza MUST BE FREE from Hamas. As @POTUS shared today, the United States stands ready to lead and Make Gaza Beautiful Again. Our pursuit is one of lasting peace in the region for all people.
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) February 5, 2025
Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, speaking on Fox News, said, “Peace in the region means a better life for the Palestinians. A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today.”
Asked what message Trump was trying to send to the Middle East after the president declared that he wants the US to “own” Gaza, Witkoff responded, “He’s telling the Middle East that the last 50 years of doing things was not the correct way of doing things, and he’s going to change it up.”
‘Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-A-Lago’
In the US Congress, some of Trump’s fiercest allies began rallying around the proposal.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, praised Trump’s remarks as taking a “bold action in hopes of achieving lasting peace in Gaza. We are hopeful this brings much needed stability and security to the region.”
Reps. Nancy Mace, of South Carolina, and Richard Hudson, of North Carolina, supported the proposal. Both are members of the House Republican Israel Caucus.
“Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-A-Lago,” Mace said, referring to Trump’s golf resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
Let’s turn Gaza into Mar-A-Lago https://t.co/ANpjI2GLaa
— Nancy Mace (@NancyMace) February 5, 2025
“President Trump will never stop working to ensure historic and lasting PEACE!” wrote Hudson.
Skeptical Republicans
Trump’s remarks were also met with early skepticism from many Republicans, including some who are typically supportive of the president.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, normally a stalwart Trump ally, expressed hesitation about the suggestion, saying, “We’ll see what our Arab friends say about that. I think most South Carolinians would not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. I think that might be problematic.”
Similarly, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri rejected any possibility of sending American troops to Gaza, and said: “I don’t know that I think it’s the best use of United States resources to spend a bunch of money in Gaza. I think maybe I prefer that to be spent in the United States first, but let’s see what happens”
Among Democrats, the rejection was unequivocal.
Senator Chris Coons of Delaware told Jewish Insider, “I’m speechless, that’s insane. I can’t think of a place on Earth that would welcome American troops less and where any positive outcome is less likely.”
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, also quoted by Jewish Insider, said, “The United States should not take anybody’s home. Number two, us nation-building in the Middle East — if you haven’t learned anything from 2001 to 2005, you haven’t been paying attention. We are very bad at that.”
Democrats: ‘He’s totally lost it’
Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, likewise, called Trump’s suggestion “crazy, but very seriously, deeply dangerous. It threatens to blow apart the Abraham Accords. All of the progress that we have made, including the brave and costly battle that Israel has waged, would be effectively undercut by this crazy notion.”
Fellow Connecticut senator Chris Murphy shared a video of Trump’s press conference on X, writing: “He’s totally lost it. A US invasion of Gaza would lead to the slaughter of thousands of US troops and decades of war in the Middle East. It’s like a bad, sick joke.”
In a second tweet, he wrote: “I have news for you — we aren’t taking over Gaza. But the media and the chattering class will focus on it for a few days and Trump will have succeeded in distracting everyone from the real story — the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.”
‘Ethnic cleansing by another name’
Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen — among the harshest critics in Congress of Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza — said on MSNBC: Trump “just said that it will be United States policy to forcibly displace 2 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip — that is ethnic cleansing by another name.
“What the president is doing here is really throwing a match on an already volatile region. This is something that Iran and our adversaries will celebrate,” he added, calling the proposal “despicable.”
Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota, another prominent critic of Israel, wrote: “President Trump today upended decades of bipartisan work to reach a two-state solution that would have Israelis and Palestinians living side-by-side in peace in their homelands. I’m also concerned that the words spoken today at the White House could put the ceasefire in jeopardy.”
And Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who is of Palestinian descent, wrote: “Palestinians aren’t going anywhere. This president can only spew this fanatical bullshit because of bipartisan support in Congress for funding genocide and ethnic cleansing. It’s time for my two-state solution colleagues to speak up.”
Tlaib has long opposed Israel’s campaign in Gaza, issuing a statement in the wake of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack that appeared to blame Israel, and has repeatedly referred to the country as an apartheid state — a fringe position in the US Congress. In 2024, she declined to endorse Trump’s opponent, then-vice president Kamala Harris, over the Biden administration’s support of Israel.
Hamas
Meanwhile, The Hamas terror group, which recently said it was ready to establish contact and hold talks with the Trump administration, said the US president’s comments about taking over Gaza were “ridiculous and “absurd.”
“Trump’s remarks about his desire to control Gaza are ridiculous and absurd, and any ideas of this kind are capable of igniting the region,” Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Palestinian Authority
Riyad Mansour, the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority’s envoy to the United Nations, said in response to Trump’s remarks on Tuesday: “For those who want to send [Gazans] to a happy nice place, let them go back to their original homes inside Israel — there are nice places there, and they will be happy to return to those places.”
Most of Gaza’s residents are descendants of Palestinians who were displaced in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, and are themselves considered refugees by the United Nations.
“In two days, in a span of a few hours, 400,000 Palestinians — walking — returned to the northern part of the Gaza Strip,” Mansour noted, referring to the movement of displaced Gazans from the southern part of the enclave to the north, from which they evacuated in the early part of the war. Israel allowed the return of the residents last week as part of the ongoing hostage-ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
“I think that we should be respecting the selections and the wishes of the Palestinian people,” he said. “This is where they belong, and they love to live there. And I think that leaders and people should respect the wishes of the Palestinian people.”
“For those who want to send the Palestinian people to a ‘nice place’, allow them to go back to their original homes in what is now Israel…the Palestinian people want to rebuild Gaza because this is where we belong.” pic.twitter.com/T8i7ZwDhLQ
— State of Palestine (@Palestine_UN) February 4, 2025
Saudi Arabia
The Saudi Foreign Ministry issued a statement early Wednesday morning, following Trump’s press conference, reiterating that its commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital is “firm and unwavering.”
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also reaffirms its unequivocal rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, land annexation, or attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land.
“The international community has a duty today to alleviate the severe humanitarian suffering endured by the Palestinian people, who will remain steadfast on their land and will not move from it,” the statement said.
The statement carefully did not mention Trump by name, however, as Saudi Arabia and other countries around the world try to avoid crossing the US president at the start of his second term.
#Statement | The Foreign Ministry affirms that Saudi Arabia’s position on the establishment of a Palestinian state is firm and unwavering. HRH Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Crown Prince and Prime Minister clearly and unequivocally reaffirmed this stance. pic.twitter.com/0uuoq8h12I
— Foreign Ministry ???????? (@KSAmofaEN) February 5, 2025
Both Trump and Netanyahu expressed optimism on Tuesday about the possibility of a normalization of relations between Israel and the kingdom — a process that appeared to be making headway until it was frozen by the Hamas attack and the onset of the war in 2023.
The Saudi government has said repeatedly that some pathway toward a Palestinian state would be a condition for normalization with Israel, a point that Trump denied.
Houthis
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a leader of the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, wrote on X that Trump’s remarks represented “American arrogance” that will subsume all if it is met with “submission from the Arabs.”
“If Egypt or Jordan or both decide to challenge America, Yemen will stand with all its strength by its side, to the furthest extent and without red lines,” he added.
The Iran-backed Houthis have attacked Israel and merchant ships repeatedly since the Hamas attack, in support of the terror group. The movement’s slogan calls for “death to Israel” and “a curse upon the Jews.”
Netherlands
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right PVV party in the Netherlands and a vocal supporter of the Jewish state, shared a tweet about Trump’s remarks on X and responded: “Very true @realDonaldTrump! As I always said: Jordan = Palestine. Let Palestinians move to Jordan. Gaza-problem solved!”
Jordan has repeatedly expressed its opposition to any displacement of Palestinians from Gaza.
Very true @realDonaldTrump!
As I always said:
Jordan = Palestine.
Let Palestinians move to Jordan. Gaza-problem solved! https://t.co/WgZSPtxwvj pic.twitter.com/Ge6edGPZbF
— Geert Wilders (@geertwilderspvv) February 4, 2025
Australia and New Zealand
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the country’s support for a two-state solution “remains the same” after Trump’s comments.
“We have had a long-standing bipartisan position for a two-state solution,” he said, referring to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel with both peoples living in “peace and security.”
“We have not received any request regarding the rebuilding of Gaza,” Albanese added. “What we have said, though, clearly we’ve supported a ceasefire. We’ve supported hostages being released. And we’ve supported aid getting into Gaza.”
Likewise, New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that its “long-standing support for a two-state solution is on the record” and added that it, too, “won’t be commenting on every proposal that is put forward.”
