By Steve Holland, Matt Spetalnick and Jeff Mason
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Donald Trump said the U.S. would take over war-ravaged Gaza and create a “Riviera of the Middle East” after resettling Palestinians elsewhere, shattering decades of U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and drawing regional condemnation.
The shock move from Trump, a former New York property developer, was swiftly condemned by regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia which Trump hopes will establish ties with Israel.
Trump, in his first major Middle East policy announcement, said he envisioned building a resort where international communities could live in harmony. Trump’s son-in-law and former aide, Jared Kushner, last year described Gaza as “valuable” waterfront property.
The casual proposal sent diplomatic shockwaves across the Middle East and around the globe. China said it opposed the forced transfer of Palestinians and Turkey called the proposal “unacceptable”.
“China has always believed that Palestinians governing Palestine is the basic principle of post-conflict governance,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said, adding Beijing backs a two-state solution in the region.
An official from Palestinian militant group Hamas, which ruled the Gaza Strip before fighting Israel in a brutal war there, said Trump’s statement about taking over the enclave was “ridiculous and absurd”.
“Any ideas of this kind are capable of igniting the region,” Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters, saying Hamas remains committed to the ceasefire accord with Israel and “ensuring the success of the negotiation in the second phase”.
It is not clear whether Trump will go ahead with his controversial plan or is simply taking an extreme position as a bargaining strategy.
Trump provided no specifics of his plan, unveiled at a joint press conference on Tuesday with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too…we’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it’ll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of,” Trump told reporters.
PERMANENT DISPLACEMENT
The announcement followed Trump’s shock proposal earlier on Tuesday for the permanent resettlement of the more than two million Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring countries, calling the enclave – where the first phase of a fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal is in effect – a “demolition site.”
The U.S. taking a direct stake in Gaza would run counter to longtime policy in Washington and for much of the international community, which has held that Gaza would be part of a future Palestinian state that includes the occupied West Bank.
Trump’s proposal raises questions whether Middle East power Saudi Arabia would be willing to join a renewed U.S.-brokered push for a historic normalisation of relations with U.S. ally Israel.
Saudi Arabia, also a key U.S. ally, rejects any attempts to displace the Palestinians from their land, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia said it would not establish ties with Israel without the creation of a Palestinian state, contradicting Trump’s claim that Riyadh was not demanding a Palestinian homeland.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has affirmed the kingdom’s position in “a clear and explicit manner” that does not allow for any interpretation under any circumstances, the statement said.
Trump said that he plans to visit Gaza, Israel and Saudi Arabia, but did not say when he plans to go.
Netanyahu would not be drawn into discussing the proposal, other than to praise Trump for trying a new approach.
The Israeli leader, whose military had engaged in more than a year of fierce fighting with Hamas militants in Gaza, said Trump was “thinking outside the box with fresh ideas” and was “showing willingness to puncture conventional thinking.”
PALESTINIANS FEAR ANOTHER ‘NAKBA’
Displacement is a highly sensitive issue among both Palestinians and Arab countries.
As fighting raged in the Gaza war, Palestinians feared they would suffer from another “Nakba”, or catastrophe, referring to the time when hundreds of thousands were dispossessed of their homes in the 1948 war at the birth of the state of Israel.
“Trump can go to hell, with his ideas, with his money, and with his beliefs. We are going nowhere. We are not some of his assets,” Samir Abu Basil, 40, a father of five from Gaza City,
told Reuters via a chat app.
“The easier for him if he wants to resolve this conflict is to take the Israelis and put them in one of the states there. They are the strangers and not the Palestinians. We are the owner of the land.”
The United States had led months of diplomacy to get Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel and recognise the country. But the Gaza war, which began in October 2023, led Riyadh to shelve the matter due to Arab anger over Israel’s offensive.
Trump would like Saudi Arabia to follow in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates, a Middle East trade and business hub, and Bahrain which signed the so-called Abraham Accords in 2020 and normalised ties with Israel.
In doing so, they became the first Arab states in a quarter century to break a longstanding taboo.
Trump on Tuesday urged Jordan, Egypt and other Arab states to take in Gazans, saying people there had no alternative but to abandon the coastal strip, which must be rebuilt after nearly 16 months of war.
A U.N. damage assessment released in January showed that clearing over 50 million tonnes of rubble left in Gaza in the aftermath of Israel’s bombardment could take 21 years and cost up to $1.2 billion.
(Reporting by Nidal Al-Mughrabi and Colleen Howe in Beijing; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Himani Sarkar, Michael Perry, Toby Chopra and Sharon Singleton)
