Donald Trump has said he wants the US to take control of the Gaza Strip – and doesn’t rule out using American troops to do it.
In a wild press conference on Tuesday evening, the president said Palestinians could be relocated to “numerous sites” or “one large site” that would be constructed and funded by “neighboring countries of great wealth” and located in “other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts.”
Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during an East Room press conference after the two leaders met in the Oval Office, Trump described war-torn Gaza as a “hell hole”.
Gaza, he said, “has been a symbol of death and destruction for so many decades, and so bad for the people anywhere near it, and especially those who live there.”
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“It’s been very unlucky. It’s been an unlucky place for a long time. Being in its presence just has not been good, and it should not go through a process of rebuilding and occupation by the same people that have really stood there and fought for it and lived there and died there and lived a miserable existence there,” he added.
Pressed on what authority would permit the United States to take over Gaza — which is considered occupied territory under international law — Trump replied that he saw the United States taking “a long-term ownership position” that would bring “great stability to the Middle East” region. He also said the US could send troops to Gaza to accomplish this.
“Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent — in a really magnificent area,” he said.
“I’ve studied this very closely over a lot of months, and I’ve seen it from every different angle, and it’s a very, very dangerous place to be, and it’s only going to get worse. And I think this is an idea that’s gotten tremendous … praise. And if the United States can help to bring stability and peace in the Middle East, we’ll do that.
“We’re going to give people a chance to live in a beautiful community that’s safe and secure, and I think you’re going to see tremendous, a tremendous outflowing of support,” Trump said.
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Trump’s incendiary comments followed a series of media availabilities during which he repeatedly called for Palestinians to be removed from Gaza and sent elsewhere.
He told reporters in the Oval Office earlier in the afternoon that Gazans “should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” after which the US could “get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable.”
He also called the Gaza Strip “a demolition site” unfit for habitation.
He added: “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area … I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had just decades and decades of death.”
Continuing, the president also told reporters that the hypothetical Palestinian relocation could be in Egypt or Jordan — two countries that have repeatedly rejected the idea of hosting more Palestinian refugees — or “other places” that “could be very beautiful and safe and nice.”
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Currently, more than 2.1 million people live in the 141 square miles that make up Gaza Strip, making the Hamas-controlled territory one of the world’s densest population centers.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, both Gaza and the Palestinian Authority-controlled West Bank were meant to comprise parts of a future Palestinian state that was long the end goal of a U.S.-led peace process that has been stalled for decades.
Forcibly displacing Gaza residents who’ve already had to relocate from their homes within the territory could be considered ethnic cleansing under international law, but Trump told reporters he thinks Palestinians who currently reside there would “love to leave Gaza if they had an option.”
“Right now, they don’t have an option. What are they going to do? They have to go back to Gaza,” he said.
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Standing alongside Netanyahu during a bilateral meeting several hours later, Trump doubled down on his comments by suggesting that Palestinians would “much rather not go back to Gaza and live in a beautiful alternative that’s safe” and said he didn’t think Palestinians should return there because Gaza “has been very unlucky for them.”
“They’ve lived like hell. They lived like you’re living in hell. Gaza is not a place for people to be living, and the only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they have no alternative,” he said.
He added that he does not believe the Jordanian or Egyptian governments would refuse his requests for them to house the 2.1 million Gaza residents because he’s not Joe Biden.
“I don’t think they’re going to tell me ‘no,’ I think they’re going to tell Biden ‘no,’ and I think they’re going to tell other people ‘no,” he said.
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