Last time President Donald Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, he shocked listeners by announcing that the United States would take over Gaza.
Now, Netanyahu is in Washington again. And, after weeks during which the Gaza takeover proposal appeared to have receded, Trump brought it back.
“You know how I feel about the Gaza Strip,” he said. “It’s an incredible piece of important real estate and I think it’s something that we would be involved in, but having a peace force like the United States there controlling and owning the Gaza Strip would be a good thing.”
He also touted the second piece of the plan: to depopulate the territory, which sparked opposition across the Middle East where several countries said they would refuse to take in Gaza Palestinians. But this time, Netanyahu said any relocation would be voluntary.
“If you take the people, the Palestinians, and move them around to different countries — and you have plenty of countries that will do that — you really have a freedom zone,” Trump said. “You know what I call it? A great location that nobody wants to live in.”
Netanyahu said, “What the president talked about is, first of all, to give people a choice. Gazans were closed in… What is wrong with giving people a choice?”
He added, “It’s going to take years to rebuild Gaza, and in the meantime, people can have an option.”
Trump came into office in January shortly after Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in which dozens of Israeli hostages were released. Netanyahu ended that ceasefire in March, after the hostage releases ended, and has since pledged to destroy Hamas. The choice was a controversial one in Israel, where mass demonstrations have called for a renewal of the truce in order to save the remaining hostages, 24 of whom are thought to still be alive.
In the meeting on Monday, Netanyahu reiterated the goal of eliminating Hamas, though both men also said they were working on a new ceasefire deal that they did not detail. Trump also spoke about a meeting he held in the Oval Office last month with released hostages, and compared their treatment to Germany, appearing to make an analogy to the Holocaust that he did not elaborate on.
“I said to them, ‘Was there any sign of love?'” Trump said. “Did Hamas show any signs of, like, help or liking you? Did they wink at you, did they give you a piece of bread extra? Did they give you a meal on the side, like you know, you think of doing, like what happened in Germany, what happened elsewhere, people would try and help people that were in unbelievable distress. They said no.”
Trump also mused about Israel’s 2005 unilateral evacuation of its settlements and soldiers from Gaza. The president claimed that Netanyahu would not have made that decision; in fact, as a member of Israel’s cabinet at the time, Netanyahu voted for it. The prime minister did not chime in on that part of the meeting.
“I don’t understand why Israel ever gave it up,” Trump said. “Israel owned it. It wasn’t this man… He wouldn’t have given it up, I know him very well. There’s no way. They took oceanfront property and they gave it to people for peace. How did that work out? Not good.”
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