Netanyahu-Trump meetingNetanyahu: After the jaws drop, you realize he's right

Trump: US will ‘take over’ Gaza, level it and create ‘the Riviera of the Middle East’

In press conference with PM, president proposes US replace Hamas in Gaza, doesn’t rule out possibility of sending troops; says he’ll soon announce policy on Israel annexing West Bank

US President Donald Trump (R) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take questions during a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 4, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)
US President Donald Trump (R) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take questions during a press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 4, 2025. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared his desire for the United States to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip, again stunning a global audience hours after doing so with his call for permanently relocating the coastal enclave’s entire population.

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it,” Trump said in prepared remarks at the start of a joint press conference with visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the two leaders met in the Oval Office.

There had been speculation that Trump would use his Tuesday meeting with Netanyahu to urge him to commit to carrying out the second phase of the ongoing Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal. The prime minister is under pressure from his far-right coalition partners to resume fighting at the conclusion of the first phase next month.

But Trump avoided publicly leaning on Netanyahu at all, instead praising his leadership and seemingly offering him a political lifeline by getting fully behind an idea — emptying Gaza — that has long been endorsed by the Israeli far right, and thereby giving ultranationalist lawmakers an incentive to keep the government intact.

The proposal also seemed likely to swing focus away from the hostage talks, or at least shake them up.

Israel and Hamas are set to begin negotiations this week on the terms of the second phase of the ceasefire in Gaza, which is supposed to see the release of the remaining living hostages in exchange for Israel permanently ending the war — something that would likely leave Hamas in power, falling short of Netanyahu’s pledge to fully dismantle the terror group’s military and governing capabilities.

To fulfill that pledge, Trump on Tuesday proposed that the US be the one to replace Hamas in Gaza, offering an alternative that Netanyahu could get behind after the premier repeatedly rejected the Palestinian Authority in that role — the preference of the Biden administration and Arab allies.

Whether Trump’s proposal is viable was another question, as was what it would mean for the 79 remaining hostages in Gaza, whom Hamas has sought to leverage as an insurance policy to remain in power.

Still reading from his prepared remarks, highlighting that this was not an off-the-cuff idea thrown around during his regular banter with reporters, Trump said he envisioned “long-term [US] ownership” of the Strip.

“We will be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, [for] get[ting] rid of the destroyed buildings, level[ing] it out, creat[ing] an economy development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing to the people of the area,” Trump said.

“[We’ve got to] do something different. You just can’t go back. If you go back, it’s going to end up the same way it has been for 100 years,” he said, adding that other leaders in the region backed his idea.

“It should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have… lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there,” Trump said of Gaza. He added that he planned to visit the enclave as well as Israel and Saudi Arabia, without saying when.

Trump insisted the Palestinians “have no alternative” but to leave the “big pile of rubble” that is Gaza after over 15 months of Israeli bombardments aimed at dismantling Hamas in response to the terror group’s October 7 onslaught.

The US president reiterated his belief that Palestinians should be removed from the “hellhole” of the Strip and placed in one or multiple other countries “with humanitarian hearts.”

Trump, since returning to office, has insisted that Egypt and Jordan volunteer to serve as hosts for the Gazans, but the two countries have adamantly rejected the idea, arguing that it would destabilize them and that the Palestinians should be allowed to remain on their land, just as Israelis are.

He said the “world’s people” would be the ones to live in Gaza once the US finishes rebuilding it, and that while the Palestinians could be among them, the enclave will become an “international” hub.

“Gaza is a hellhole right now. It was before the bombing started, frankly, and we’re going to give people a chance to live in a beautiful community that’s safe and secure,” he said.

“I don’t want to be cute, I don’t want to be a wise guy,” Trump said and then referred to Gaza as potentially “the Riviera of the Middle East. This could be something that could be so magnificent.”

It is not the first time the former property tycoon has spoken about the Palestinian territory in terms of real estate, saying in October it could be “better than Monaco.”

Last year, Trump’s son-in-law and former senior White House adviser Jared Kushner described Gaza as “waterfront property that could be valuable,” adding that he would “do his best to move the people out and then clean it up.”

A Palestinian woman hangs laundry as children climb debris in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on February 4, 2025. (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Asked whether American troops would be sent to Gaza, Trump said, “As far as Gaza is concerned, we’ll do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we’ll do that.”

The response and Trump’s broader plan for a US takeover of Gaza appeared to be a departure from his previous policy of reducing the US military presence in the region, rather than bolstering it.

The last time the US sent troops to Gaza — or at least to the enclave’s shores — was to try and set up a temporary port to help funnel in humanitarian aid last year. But poor weather conditions forced the dismantlement of the platform just several weeks after it was set up at the direction of then-president Joe Biden.

Regarding the hostages, Trump said he was working to see “all of them” released adding that the US would get “somewhat more violent” if Hamas did not release all of them, “because they would have broken their word.”

Trump said specifically that he’d like to get to reach phase two of the deal, but his call for the US to take over and empty out Gaza also risks upending those fragile talks and emboldening both sides to resume the war.

Palestinians fume as some Republicans cast doubt

Trump’s plan doesn’t seem contingent on whether or not Gaza’s population of roughly two million people even want to leave, and the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations quickly insisted that they don’t.

“Our homeland is our homeland,” said Riyad Mansour. “And I think that leaders and people should respect the wishes of the Palestinian people.”

Hamas in a statement decried Trump’s vision. “We reject Trump’s statements in which he said that the residents of the Gaza Strip have no choice but to leave, and we consider them a recipe for creating chaos and tension in the region.”

Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump’s special envoy for the Middle East, arrives for a press conference with the US president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, on February 4, 2025. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP)

Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff said Palestinians need not be tied to the land they’re currently on in order to have a better life.

“A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today,” he said in an interview with Fox News shortly after the Trump-Netanyahu press conference.

“A better life is about better opportunity, better financial conditions, better aspirations for you and your family. That doesn’t occur because you get to pitch a tent in the Gaza Strip and you’re surrounded by 30,000 munitions that could go off at any moment,” said Witkoff, who visited Gaza during a trip to the region last week. “Gaza today is uninhabitable and will probably be uninhabitable for at least the next 10 to 15 years.”

Earlier Tuesday, the envoy tore into the ceasefire framework crafted by Biden, which he helped to finalize in Doha last month, arguing that it unrealistically envisioned a Gaza reconstruction process of five years when the effort would take much longer.

Even some Republicans chafed at Trump’s proposal.

“We’ll see what our Arab friends say about that,” said Trump ally and Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. “I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. It might be problematic.”

US President Donald Trump (right) and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrive for a news conference in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

‘Jaw-dropping’ awe from Netanyahu

Standing at a podium beside Trump, Netanyahu hailed the president as Israel’s “greatest friend” and praised his “willingness to think outside the box.”

“You say things others refuse to say. And after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and they say, ‘You know he’s right,'” the prime minister said, adding that Trump’s plan could “change history” and was worth “paying attention to.”

Netanyahu was making the first visit of a foreign leader to the White House since Trump assumed office.

The two have had tense relations in the past, but Netanyahu has seized on the Republican’s return to power after his ties with Biden became increasingly frayed over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.

“You are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House,” said Netanyahu, listing Trump’s policies toward the Jewish state in his first term, including leaving the Iran nuclear deal, brokering the Abraham Accords, and moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

“You’ve picked up right where you left off,” he said.

US President Donald Trump listens as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in the East Room of the White House, February 4, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“Your leadership has brought hostages home,” said Netanyahu. He added that Trump freed up munitions allegedly withheld by the previous administration, ended “unjust sanctions against Israeli citizens” — referring to sanctions on violent settlers — “confronted antisemitism, stopped funding UNRWA, and renewed maximum pressure against Iran.”

All this has been done by Trump in just two weeks, he said. “Can you imagine where we’ll be in four years?”

Israel, said Netanyahu, has been changing the face of the Middle East since the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023.

“We have defeated some of America’s worst enemies. We took out terrorists that were wanted for decades for shedding rivers of American blood,” the premier said.

“Israel has never been stronger and the Iran terror axis has never been weaker,” he said.

But to secure Israel’s future and bring peace to the region, “we have to finish the job,” added Netanyahu, reiterating pledges — which some have criticized as conflicting — to return all the hostages and remove Hamas from power in Gaza.

People walk past an electronic billboard that shows US President Donald Trump, left, shaking hands with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with text that says: ‘We are ready,’ in Tel Aviv, February 3, 2025. (AP Photo/ Ariel Schalit)

“Israel will end the war by winning the war,” Netanyahu promised. This, in turn, will “usher in the peace with Saudi Arabia and with others.”

He said he believes “peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not only feasible; it’s going to happen.”

If Trump had had another half-year in his first term, it would already have happened, said the prime minister. “I’m committed to achieving it, and I know the president is committed to achieving it. And I think the Saudi leadership is interested in achieving it.”

But shortly after the press conference concluded, Saudi Arabia issued a statement reiterating that it would not normalize ties with Israel before a Palestinian state is established. The statement was specifically in response to Trump’s claim earlier in the day that Riyadh has not, in fact, conditioned Israel normalization on a two-state solution.

While Trump gave much for the Israeli right to gush about, he told reporters in the Oval Office with Netanyahu earlier in the day that he did not support Israel reestablishing settlements in Gaza. “I don’t see it happening. It’s too dangerous for people. No one wants to be there. [Israel’s] warriors don’t want to be there. Their soldiers don’t want to be there.”

A right-wing demonstration supporting the reestablishment of Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, in Sderot, December 26, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Flash90)

Asked at the press conference whether he’d back Israel annexing the West Bank, Trump said he’ll likely be “making an announcement” on the matter at some point in the next four weeks.

“We’re discussing that with many of your representatives. You’re represented very well… [but] we haven’t been taking the position on it yet,” Trump said during the press conference to a reporter who signaled that he supported annexation.

“We also see eye to eye on Iran,” said Netanyahu — the same Iran, he noted, that “tried to kill us both: they tried to kill you, Mr. President, and through their proxies, they tried to kill me.”

US President Donald Trump, right, meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House, February 4, 2025, in Washington. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP)

“We are both committed to rolling back Iran’s aggression in the region and ensuring that Iran never develops a nuclear weapon,” Netanyahu said.

Trump seemed a bit less militant, and expressed his desire to address the Iranian nuclear threat through diplomatic means.

“If we could solve this problem without warfare, without all of the things that you’ve been witnessing over the last number of years, I think it would be a tremendous thing,” the president said.

Asked whether he’d back an Israeli strike on Iran, Trump responded, “We’ll have to see what happens.”

Agencies contributed to this report.

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