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“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,” Trump told reporters at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
*Incoming US President Donald Trump with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu
PEGASUS REPORTERS, LAGOS | FEBRUARY 6, 2025
President Donald Trump says he wants the United States to take ownership of the Gaza Strip and redevelop it after resettling Palestinian people in other countries.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,” Trump told reporters at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump did not immediately offer details on how the US would manage the site and what it would do with it. He did say the US would work to economically develop the area after cleaning out the destroyed buildings.
Trump made the comments following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, where the two leaders discussed the fragile ceasefire and hostage deal in the Israel-Hamas war.
“I don’t think people should be going back,” Trump said. “You can’t live in Gaza right now. I think we need another location. I think it should be a location that’s going to make people happy.”
Trump’s comments came as he and top advisers made the case that a three-to-five-year timeline for reconstruction of the war-torn territory, as laid out in a temporary truce agreement, is not viable.
“You look over the decades, it’s all death in Gaza,” Trump added. “This has been happening for years. It’s all death. If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people, permanently, in nice homes where they can be happy and not be shot and not be killed and not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza.”
Egypt and Jordan, as well as other Arab nations, have flatly rejected calls by Trump to relocate the territory’s 2.3 million Palestinians during the post-war rebuilding of the territory.
But senior administration officials continue to press the case for relocation of Palestinians on humanitarian grounds.
“To me, it is unfair to explain to Palestinians that they might be back in five years,” Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, told reporters. “That’s just preposterous.”
The White House’s focus on reconstruction comes as the nascent truce between Israel and Hamas hangs in the balance.
The Israeli prime minister is also facing competing pressure from his right-wing coalition to end a temporary truce against Hamas militants in Gaza and from war-weary Israelis who want the remaining hostages home and for the 15-month conflict to end.
Trump, meanwhile, remains guarded about the long-term prospects for the truce, even as he takes credit for pressuring Hamas and Israel into the hostage and ceasefire agreement that went into effect the day before he returned to office last month.
“I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold,” Trump told reporters on Monday.
Since returning to office, Trump has called for relocating Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, even as Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Jordanian King Abdullah II have rejected it.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League have joined Egypt and Jordan in rejecting plans to move Palestinians out of their territories in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Yet Trump insists he can persuade Egypt and Jordan to come around to accept displaced Palestinians because of the significant aid that the US provides Cairo and Amman. Hard-line right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government have embraced the call to move displaced Palestinians out of Gaza.
Culled from The Mail
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