US officials defend Trump’s plan to relocate Gazans: He thinks it’s ‘inhumane’ to keep them there during long reconstruction
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

WASHINGTON — Two of US President Donald Trump’s senior aides offer further detail regarding his recent comments on the reconstruction of Gaza and his idea for Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians while that process takes place.
“President Trump looks at the Gaza Strip and sees it as a demolition site, sees it as impractical for it to be rebuilt within three to five years, believes it will take at least 10 to 15 and thinks it is inhumane to force people to live in an uninhabitable plot of land with unexploded ordnances and rubble,” the first senior US official says during a briefing with reporters.
Trump “is looking for solutions to help the people of Gaza have normal lives while the Gaza Strip is being rebuilt, and he is trying to look at this in a realistic way,” says the senior official.
A second senior US official notes that Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff visited Gaza last week, becoming the first American official to do so in 15 years. He was struck by how unrealistic the five-year reconstruction timeline included in the May 2023 ceasefire proposal put forward by former US president Joe Biden was.
“You’ll need things like a geotechnical survey. There’s no utility, there’s disease, there’s [no running] water. You couldn’t get an ambulance through there, even if you wanted to right now, so it really is quite uninhabitable,” the second official says.
Notably, the US officials don’t reiterate Trump’s call for Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians — a demand that both countries have rejected.
The Trump aides stress that the US wants to work with its Arab allies and Israel to come up with “creative solutions to this challenge.”
One of the officials says that they met yesterday with a group of Arab ambassadors to discuss the matter.
“This is not going to be something that the United States is going to solve alone and not something that we’re going to impose on Arab[s] and Israel, rather, we’re asking our friends and partners and allies to come together as we look for solutions we can provide that would be humane and provide dignity for the Palestinian people,” the official adds.