U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to displace Palestinians from Gaza and have the United States take control of the territory has drawn strong reaction worldwide, potentially upending Washington’s longstanding Israeli-Palestinian policy.
"The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We'll own it," Trump said during a joint press conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 4.
Details about how the radical proposal, first made last month, would work were not clear, including under what authority the United States could take control of the Gaza Strip, or how the 2.3 million residents would be relocated.
Many established Middle East foreign policy experts deem the plan unworkable and suggest the U.S. administration reconsider its stance due to the staunch opposition it has encountered.
“This has no realistic prospect, and I think once the administration sees the opposition, they’ll pull back from this whole thing,” said Azriel Bermant, a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague.
Cease-Fire Deal In The Balance
There are further concerns that the proposal risks damaging a fragile cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas, the U.S.- and EU-designated Palestinian terrorist group that has run Gaza since 2007.
The multiphase cease-fire, which went into effect last month, temporarily paused more than a year of fighting in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
“The fear is that [Trump’s proposal] could do damage to the possibilities of getting the remaining hostages out,” Bermant said.
The crucial second phase of the cease-fire agreement envisions a permanent end to the war, but negotiations have not even started to iron out the details and implement it.
"There is a risk that this could hurt efforts" to agree on and execute the second phase of the cease-fire, Bermant said.
Allies, Adversaries Up In Arms
Prominent Arab nations, including those that have normalized relations with Israel, jointly rejected Trump’s recent demand for Egypt and Jordan to accept Gaza residents.
Now, Trump has upped the ante by suggesting that, not only does he want Gazans relocated, but intends for the United States to take control and turn Gaza into a “Riviera of the Middle East."
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas has rejected Trump’s proposal and said that “legitimate Palestinian rights are not negotiable.”
U.S. allies and adversaries have also criticized the plan and renewed calls for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The French Foreign Ministry asserted that relocating Palestinians would be a “serious violation of international law” and insisted that Gaza cannot be controlled by “a third state.”
The Saudis, who maintain good relations with Trump, warned that they “will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without” a sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Trump aims for regional powerhouse Saudi Arabia to join Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords, but it’s hard to see this moving forward in tandem with his current Gaza proposal.
China and Russia have also expressed opposition to the forced transfer of Palestinians.
Around 2.4 million registered Palestinian refugees currently live in Jordan, according to UN figures. Many of them have been displaced for generations while fighting for their right of return under international law. There is a lack of official data on Palestinian refugee numbers in Egypt, but reports say at least 115,000 Gaza residents have crossed the border into Egypt since the outbreak of the war in October 2023.
The View From Israel
Trump’s plan will undoubtedly be welcomed by hard-liners in Netanyahu's cabinet, as well as many Israeli citizens.
Some are suggesting that this is crucial for Israel's security while others argue it might even be the most humanitarian solution for a population who have no homes to go back to after the widespread destruction of Gaza.
But for many moderate Israelis, who are supportive of the two-state solution, the worry is that this could backfire badly.
Opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yair Lapid likened the proposal to “dropping a bomb” whose ramifications were difficult to predict.
Challenging U.S. Policy
The United States has actively backed a two-state solution since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, which envisioned both Gaza and the West Bank as part of a Palestinian state.
All U.S. administrations since then have supported a two-state solution, but Trump appears to be shifting a long-standing U.S. policy.
"There is no power in the world that can determine where Palestinians will live. This is our country,” Samir al-Barawi, a Palestinian refugee in Bosnia, told RFE/RL’s Balkan Service.
“Trump cannot decide where we will live. We were born in Gaza and only death can take people out of Gaza.”
Barawi said he, like other Palestinians, would like to return to Gaza one day, “but not as tourists.”
Trump has not publicly commented on whether he supports an Israeli annexation of the West Bank, but when asked about it on February 4, he said Israel is a “small country in terms of land.”
Bermant reiterated that Trump’s Gaza proposal was unlikely to be implemented and argued that a “bigger concern” is whether the U.S. president is going to allow the Netanyahu government to annex the West Bank.
“That would be a huge shift [in U.S. policy],” he said.
