 "How did Trump’s Gaza takeover plan take shape? Is son-in-law Jared Kushner behind it?")
United States President shocked and stunned the world on Tuesday (February 4) when he stood at the podium with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and announced that America would take ownership of Gaza and redevelop it into a “Middle Eastern Riviera”.
While Israel’s Bibi, as Netanyahu is popularly called, stood along with Trump and praised him for his idea, many around the world were bamboozled, with some going as far as calling the proposal “absurd” and “entirely unrealistic”.
But how did US President Donald Trump come up with this idea of taking over Gaza? Was his son-in-law Jared Kushner behind it?
We search and get you all the answers you are looking for.
Trump’s Gaza proposal
On Tuesday, breaking from years-old US policy, President Donald Trump told the media, “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.”
The US president, who made a name for himself as a property developer, added, “We’ll make sure that it’s done world-class. It’ll be wonderful for the people — Palestinians, Palestinians mostly, we’re talking about.”
Outlining his plan a bit further, Trump suggested that the US would redevelop the territory after Palestinians are resettled elsewhere and turn the territory into a place where the “world’s people”— including Palestinians — would live.
Trump added that the Gaza Strip could become “the Riviera of the Middle East. This could be something that could be so magnificent”.
“We’re going to take over that piece, and we’re going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs, and it will be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of, said Trump, who later supplemented it by saying, “I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable.”
Backlash to Trump’s Gaza takeover
Unsurprisingly, the backlash and condemnation of Trump’s idea came in swiftly. Countries, world agencies and experts all questioned the US president on the plan. Even Gazans rejected the US president’s idea, saying they would never agree to give up the territory as US President Donald Trump has suggested.
“We only have one choice: to live or die here,” Ahmed Halasa, a 41-year-old resident of Gaza City, standing by the ruins of a toppled building told AFP. Twenty-four Ahmed al-Minawi echoed similar sentiments. He told AFP, “We returned because we categorically reject displacement.”
The United Nations General Secretary António Guterres also questioned Trump’s takeover, saying “It is essential to avoid any form of ethnic cleansing”
Gaza takeover, an idea inside Trump’s head
But how did US President Donald Trump come up with this proposal for Gaza? People who are close to the US president have revealed that the idea was formulated over time and appeared to originate with the president himself.
Trump, in fact, had dropped hints in a phone call with Netanyahu last year where he told the Israeli PM that Gaza would be a prime location for real estate development and also asked what sort of hotels he thought could be built there, reported the Wall Street Journal. However, the paper reported that no mention of a takeover was stated in that phone call.
No one knew of the plan, some reports reveal, with the New York Times saying that there had been no meetings with the State Department or Pentagon to discuss details about a plan of this magnitude. Neither were there any working groups, nor did the Defence Department provide any estimates of the troop numbers required, or cost estimates, or even an outline of how it might work.
However, some officials do believe that Trump’s Gaza plan had been run by some people, ahead of the Netanyahu talks. Perhaps, the idea took root faster after his West Asia envoy, Steve Witkoff , returned from Gaza last week, conveying the dire condition of Gaza.
And it seems that Witkoff’s description of Gaza made an impression on Trump, who, in turn, spoke to aides about the conditions and the lack of alternative plans being provided by other nations.
“The president has said he’s been socialing this idea for quite some time. He’s been thinking about this,” his press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. However, she acknowledged the idea hadn’t been formalised into written form until Trump voiced it Tuesday.
“The plan was written in the president’s remarks last night as he revealed it to the world,” she said.
When the media asked his Cabinet members if they knew about Trump’s plan, most responded in the negative. For instance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was travelling in Guatemala, heard the idea for the first time as he watched Trump’s news conference with Netanyahu on television.
Trump’s son-in-law an influencing factor
Shortly after Trump made his Gaza takeover plan public, many noted that his comments mirrored what his son-in-law, Jared Kushner , who also served in his first term, had said to Harvard’s Middle East initiative a year ago. This has led many to believe that maybe Kushner, Ivanka ’s husband, may have had something to do with Trump’s idea.
Last February, in an interview with Harvard, Kushner had praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable … if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner told Prof Tarek Masoud, the faculty chair of the Middle East Initiative. Kushner also lamented “all the money” that had gone into the territory’s tunnel network and munitions instead of education and innovation.
“It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up,” Kushner said. “But I don’t think that Israel has stated that they don’t want the people to move back there afterwards.”
In the same interview, Kushner added that in his opinion Israel should move civilians from Gaza to the Negev desert in southern Israel.
As The Spectator noted while Kushner has been away from Trump’s second term in office, the Gaza plan bears the unmistakable imprint of his thinking.
It remains to be seen if Trump’s plan of taking over Gaza actually happens, but for now, the idea of seeing a ‘Trump Tower’ in the Strip remains nothing but a dream.
With inputs from agencies
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