Trump Administration officials are hurrying to accompany the president’s audacious and unlikely plan for the United States to appropriate Gaza and turn it into a “Middle East Riviera”, trying to understand an idea that some expect to be so Strange to force other nations to present their own proposals to the Palestinian enclave.
President Donald Trump’s idea – announced on Tuesday night at a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – was formulated over time, according to people familiar with the subject, and seems to have originated in the president himself . It was just the latest reminder that political ideas often start with Trump, rather than slowly developing through national experts before they arrived at the oval room for discussion.
At their source, the authorities said, this suggestion was partly intended to encourage action on a question that Trump considered dying without other nations to offer reasonable solutions to the reconstruction of an area that was obliterated by Israelite bombing following terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023 of Hamas.
In any case, the revelation of the idea – you did when reading notes in the east room – was a shock.
A counselor for Middle East issues had not heard the proposal until Trump approached it during his press conference. The employee described himself as an atonite.
But others said that Trump had presented the idea to others in the days before conversations with Netanyahu. His envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who visited Gaza last week, returned to Washington with a terrible impression of the devastation he witnessed, transmitting Trump and later to journalists, the opinion that he was no longer a habitable.
“It is the buildings that can fall at any time. There are no public services, no water, electricity, gas, nothing. God only knows what kind of disease may be rotting there, ”Witkoff told journalists on Tuesday. “So when the president talks about cleaning the place, he talks about making him habitable. And this is a long term plan. ”
Witkoff’s descriptions left an impression on the president, who was concerned about the matter. In conversations with advisers, he lamented what he said was an emptiness of alternative plans offered by other actors in the region.
“The president said he has been socializing this idea for some time. He has been thinking about it, ”said his press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday.
Still, she admitted that the idea had not been formalized in written form until Trump expressed her on Tuesday.
“The plan was written in the president’s comments last night, when he revealed him to the world,” she said.
And in comments that seemed to soften some of the president’s own positions, Leavitt insisted that he was defending only a “temporary” relocation of the Palestinians of Gaza, although Trump said a day before no one should return to the Gaza Strip. He also said that Trump did not commit to sending American troops to Gaza – although he did not exclude him – and minimized possible US financial obligations to ensure, as Trump described, the “long -term property” of the track.
An White House employee told CNN that Witkoff’s descriptions of his trip were a “inflection point” for the president.
Trump’s closest advisers to the Middle East, such as National Security Counselor Mike Waltz and Witkoff, knew that Trump was planning to present the proposal on Tuesday, the employee said. Waltz and Witkoff discussed the idea with Netanyahu on Monday night while meeting with the Israeli leader at Casa Blair, the official said.
“The notion of rehearsal, rinse, repeat – let’s do the same thing in Gaza we have done for decades will not be sustained,” said the White House official about how Trump and his team came to this position. “We are in this cycle, in this cycle … There is too much time and is not working.”
Now, Trump’s brokers for the Middle East are giving priority to “continuous steps,” according to a source familiar with the strategy told CNN, especially ensuring that the current ceasefire agreement and hostage agreement remain and that all parties “fulfill their part of the agreement.”
Trump personally states that he will be able to reach a long -term agreement with Jordan and Egypt to accept Gaza inhabitants displaced by his proposed effort, although these countries reject any plan to accept new Palestinian refugees, the house official said, said the house official White.
This will be the central point of the discussion that Trump will have with King Abdullah of Jordan when he visits the White House next week.
Like many regional leaders, King Jordano is now unexpectedly facing a new dynamic in the deeply complex issue of what to do with Gaza.
Trump’s interest in the location of Gaza by the seaside
The president’s comments were surprised several members of the Cabinet in the East Room. While Republican leaders watched from the Capitol, they were also caught by surprise by the comments.
The proposal for Gaza did not emerge in private meetings that Trump kept with members of the Republican Party of the armed service committees, said the advisors, although the ceasefire and the broader challenges throughout the Middle East have been key points to discussion until Last week.
“No,” a senior republican advisor told CNN. “Not even a word about it was mentioned by the president.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was traveling in Guatemala, heard the idea for the first time when he watched Trump’s press conference on television with Netanyahu. The Middle East was drastically reduced from your folder, with Witkoff, the president’s longtime friend, to serve as a US sent to the region.
Rubio, who, according to Trump, had participated by telephone at his meetings with the Israelites “listening to every word we said,” he wrote later on social networks: “The United States are ready to lead and make Gaza pretty again. Our goal is lasting peace in the region for all peoples. ”
It was not clear whether Netanyahu knew exactly what Trump intended to say, but the smile that came up on his face made it clear that he liked what he heard.
However, despite all the astonishment with Trump’s words, who often sounded more like a real estate prosecutor than as an American president, his ideas for Gaza were gaining strength as the day advanced and Netanyahu was good Coming to the White House. He read, from a prepared text, the phrase that caused a double look worldwide: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip.”
A day after Trump made these comments, Waltz suggested that the issue had been being treated for some time.
“We have been analyzing this in recent weeks and months and, frankly, he has been thinking about it since October 7,” Waltz said on Wednesday at CBS.
“He doesn’t see realistic solutions on how these miles and miles and miles of rubble will be cleaned,” Waltz continued. He added: “The fact that no one has a realistic solution and that he has new, bold and fresh ideas, I do not seem to be criticized at all. I think it will lead the whole region to present their own solutions, if they do not like Mr. Trump ”.
In public and private conversations over the past year, Trump repeatedly highlighted the value of Gaza’s seaside location, suggesting that he was a privileged property for development.
His son -in -law Jared Kushner presented a similar argument last year, calling the “very valuable” Gaza sea waterfront. Kushner is not working at Trump’s White House, as he did during his father-in-law’s first administration, but it is, however, seen as a resonance box in key issues, including in the Middle East.
Trump, when speaking on the day of inauguration, last month, gave clues about the direction that his plan for Gaza can take.
“It’s a phenomenal location by the sea with the best climate. Everything is good. There could be wonderful things, ”said Trump shortly after he took office. At that time, he stated that “perhaps” was willing to help with reconstruction.
This opening to help clearly evolved in the next two weeks to the plan it revealed on Tuesday to take control of the Gaza Strip – potentially with the help of American troops – and rebuild it in a “international and unbelievable place.”
Sending American troops to the region would contrast strongly with Trump’s longstanding criticism of the construction of nations and foreign involvement. During the administration of George W. Bush, Trump was one of the most arrested critics of the republican orthodoxy of national construction.
“We are finishing the age of endless wars. In its place is a renewed and clear focus on the defense of America’s vital interests, ”Trump told West Point cadets in 2020.” It’s not the duty of US troops to resolve old conflicts in distant lands that many people have never heard of. “
