U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., Feb. 4, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening said the United States “will take over the Gaza Strip,” and “we’ll own it.”
Trump said that all Palestinians currently living in Gaza — nearly 2 million people — should leave the territory and be placed in other countries in the Middle East, among them Jordan and Egypt.
He said the U.S. could then re-develop Gaza, which has been decimated during a war with Israel.
“Gaza is a hellhole,” Trump said at the White House during a joint news conference with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He later suggested that Gaza could be “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
“This could be so magnificent.”
Netanyahu, when asked about the U.S. taking over Gaza, said, “I think it’s something that could change history.”
“And I think it’s really worth pursuing this avenue,” he added.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., Feb. 4, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Trump’s suggestion that the United States should take over Gaza was a new one for him.
But it comes on the heels of his suggestions that the U.S. buy or take over Greenland from Denmark, that Canada becomes a 51st state for the U.S., and that the U.S. take back control of the Panama Canal.
“The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” Trump said Monday.
“We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area,” Trump said.
“Do a real job, do something different.”
Netanyahu’s visit to the White House comes as American, Israeli and Arab negotiators begin talks around a second phase of a ceasefire plan for Gaza, which has so far shown promise of ending the devastating 15-month war.
Since the ceasefire began in January, several Israeli hostages have been freed and Hamas has retaken political control of Gaza.
Palestinian civilians who were forced from their homes during the past year of war have also begun to return.
But the question of what happens now in Gaza, politically and logistically, is a fraught one.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump said he did not think the occupied territory’s inhabitants, which numbered about 2.2 million before the war began, should return to their homes.
“This is a very difficult situation. I don’t think people should be going back to Gaza,” Trump said at the White House earlier. “They’re living like hell. They have no alternative.”
Trump said he was working to convince neighboring countries to accept hundreds of thousands more refugees from the territory.
“The king in Jordan and the general in Egypt will open their hearts and give us the kind of land we need,” Trump said Tuesday evening.
— Additional reporting by CNBC’s Christina Wilkie
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