President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed moving Gazans to a “good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” in another country, offering a vision of mass displacement that would likely inflame sentiments in the Arab world as he prepared to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.
Trump proposes permanent displacement of Gazans as he welcomes Netanyahu to White House
The two leaders were set to focus on the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, relocating Palestinians, rebuilding Gaza and normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Updated
February 4, 2025
On
Feb. 4, President Donald Trump said the people of Gaza “should get a
good, fresh, beautiful piece of land” instead of returning to their
homes. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Craig Hudson for The
Washington Post/The Washington Post)
Trump framed the vision as a practical response to the physical destruction of Gaza after 16 months of intense bombardment from Israel. But given the decades-long history of the displacement of Palestinians in the region, as well as vows by the Israeli far-right to claim the Gaza Strip for themselves, Trump’s proposal was likely to provoke a furious reaction from many Palestinians as well as their Arab allies in the region, since it suggested permanently removing Gaza’s 2.2 million residents from Palestinian territory and settling them somewhere else.
Trump did not specify where the new land might be found, although he made his comments after repeating his desire for Egypt and Jordan to take in Gaza’s residents. Nor did he appear to grapple with the many Gaza residents who would not want to depart their land nor the practicalities of potentially forcing them to leave it, suggesting that “they'd love to leave Gaza if they had an option. Right now, they don't have an option.”
The proposal was a sharp prelude to Trump’s first meeting with a foreign guest since he reclaimed the White House. It drew a sharp contrast with the Biden administration, which spent more than a year taking painstaking, repeated visits to the region to try to devise a reconstruction plan that would satisfy the kaleidoscope of competing interests over the war-battered territory.
Since reclaiming the Oval Office, Trump has repeatedly said that he expects Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza as the territory rebuilds from the war — a process he has said could take 10 or 15 years. Egypt and Jordan have hotly resisted, saying that any resolution to the conflict needs to leave Palestinians on their own land.
Trump and Netanyahu were set to focus on the tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, relocating Palestinians and rebuilding in war-torn Gaza, and normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, according to senior Trump administration officials.
The second phase of the ceasefire, and the release of additional hostages, is planned to be at the forefront of an afternoon filled with meetings, along with a joint news conference and a private dinner at the White House. But in the hours leading up to the meeting, the president continued to state his views that he believes Gaza is uninhabitable for at least another decade, raising major questions for Palestinians hoping to return to their homeland.
Gaza, he said, is “a pure demolition site,” “a big pile of rubble,” and a place with “decades and decades of death,” he told reporters before Netanyahu arrived.
“The Gaza thing has not worked. It's never worked,” he said. “And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. And we get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable.”
He suggested that the rebuilding effort would not ultimately involve a return to Gaza.
“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, that's for sure. I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly raised the idea in recent days of relocating Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, an idea that both countries have rejected. Ahead of the meeting, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Turkey — another country that has been involved in brokering an end to the conflict — released a joint statement rejecting any proposal to displace or resettle Palestinians to “countries outside the Palestinian territories, either for short-term or long-term purposes.”
Among other concerns, leaders of Egypt and Jordan oppose enabling what they say would be an Israeli takeover of the territory.
But Trump has vowed to push for it given what he says will be the difficulty of reconstructing the area. One of his signature diplomatic tactics in a negotiation is to destabilize both allies and adversaries to gain leverage — as he has with threatened tariffs, for example, on Mexico, Canada and China.
It is unclear whether he has similar aims in his rhetoric on Gaza, but he invited Jordan’s King Abdullah II for a meeting in Washington next week. Egypt, meanwhile, is deeply dependent on the United States for military aid, giving Trump leverage in the relationship.
“In any city in the United States of America, if you had damage, that was 100th of what I saw in Gaza... nobody would be allowed to go back to their homes. That’s how dangerous it is,” Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steven Witkoff told reporters. “It is buildings that could tip over at any moment. There’s no utilities there whatsoever, no working water, electric, gas, nothing. God knows what kind of disease might be festering there. So when the president talks about cleaning it out, he talks about making it habitable.”
Trump, a former real estate developer, last month referred to Gaza as “a phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather,” and added that “some fantastic things could be done with Gaza.”
The visit comes at a difficult moment for Netanyahu, who has faced domestic criticism from members of his coalition for agreeing to a ceasefire, as well as international condemnation for his role in creating a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s meeting with Trump was one part of several days of meetings as he adjusts to a Washington that has changed politically over the past few weeks, with Republicans who are more aligned with him now more ascendant. In addition to meetings with Trump administration officials Monday and Tuesday, Netanyahu is expected to visit with congressional leaders Thursday.
Trump blasted former president Joe Biden for what he said was insufficient support for Israel, though the Biden administration generally backed Netanyahu’s military campaign in Gaza, which has stretched for 16 months. But despite Trump’s pledges, he and Netanyahu do not see eye to eye about all aspects of the conflict.
Among other issues, Trump favors a swift and final end to the war, and wants to see the second phase of the ceasefire lead to a permanent halt to hostilities. Netanyahu is facing a domestic rebellion from his right-wing coalition partners if he does not resume the fighting in Gaza once the hostages are released as part of the first phase of the deal. The Israeli leader will need to reconcile the differences.
Asked whether Trump wanted to continue to implement the second phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage-release agreement, which calls for the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, Witkoff said Tuesday that “we’re focused on making sure that phase one completes exactly as it should complete, that all the hostages who are part of that deal come home.”
“I have no assurances that it will hold,” Trump told reporters Monday. “I mean, I’ve seen people brutalized. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. No, I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold.”
The agreement, which was mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, began Jan. 19 and includes an initial phase of 42 days. Phase-two negotiations are expected to start this week, with some issues still unresolved. The initial ceasefire is supposed to continue even if the second phase is not agreed before the 42 days are up.
Over the past two weeks, Hamas and allied militants have released 18 hostages who were abducted in the attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, including 13 Israelis and five Thai nationals. Israel has also freed more than 580 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, allowed more aid to flow into Gaza and withdrawn its troops from key military posts in the enclave.
The Gaza Health Ministry says that more than 47,000 people have been killed in the territory since October 2023. About 40 people are believed to still be held hostage in Gaza.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. That was a goal during Trump’s first term, and something that Biden also made a priority.
Trump has also floated traveling to Saudi Arabia as his first foreign trip. Any agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be a major breakthrough for the security and economy of the region, building trade ties between the Jewish state and the biggest and most important Arab nation after decades of tensions.
The two countries were close to a deal just ahead of the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 — one that would probably have sidelined Palestinian interests. But since the ferocious Israeli response, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has faced domestic demand that a Palestinian state be part of any agreement with Israel.
That would be a step that Netanyahu has spent his career trying to avoid, and that many Israelis now reject. Trump also appears not to believe it is a priority, and it isn’t yet clear how the trio of leaders can find a path to an agreement.
Trump and Netanyahu will also discuss how to handle Iran, which both U.S. and Israeli officials believe is at its weakest point in years after major damage Israel has inflicted on its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and the separate collapse of Iran’s greatest ally in the region, the regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Tehran has been left without most of the tools it has used for decades to exert power throughout the Middle East.
That vulnerability could provide an opening to some sort of deal with the United States and the international community, should Trump choose to take it. But it also makes Tehran more of a target for Iran hawks in both Israel and Washington, and could spur Iranian leaders to go forward in their efforts to develop a nuclear weapon, policymakers said.
Ahead of the meeting with Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order that reimposed “maximum pressure” on Iran, a first-term policy that imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Tehran’s economy in a bid to deter it from pursuing nuclear weapons.
“It’s very tough on Iran,” Trump said. “Hopefully we are not going to have to use it very much.”
Trump also signed an executive order pulling the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council and the U.N. agency that provides aid to Gaza, which Israel has criticized as working in coordination with Hamas. The decision is mostly symbolic after Congress last year pulled funding for the group.
Trump has tried to signal a departure from the decades-long relationship that Biden had with Netanyahu, which grew tense over the past year as Biden began criticizing Netanyahu over aspects of the war, particularly the number of civilian casualties.
But Trump, too, has had a complicated history with the Israeli leader. They were close allies during his first term, with Trump moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. But in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Trump began publicly and privately criticizing Netanyahu, after the Israeli leader congratulated Biden on winning.
Trump also initially blamed Netanyahu’s government after Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, and in April he told Time magazine that “Bibi Netanyahu rightfully has been criticized for what took place on October 7.”
But the two have tried to repair the relationship, culminating with Netanyahu being granted the first visit by a foreign leader of Trump’s second term.
Karen DeYoung in Washington and Shira Rubin in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
@michaelbirnbaum