Trump's 'own' Gaza bid: Aides knew Potus wanted to take over but had no written plan, says report

Hours before US President Donald Trump proclaimed to takeover Gaza at a joint press conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a report suggested that his aides were aware of what was coming. According to a report published by Politico, Trump and his team had been discussing the idea for months and some of his advisors saw it as a negotiating ploy to give Israeli leaders more leverage over Hamas as they try to navigate a fragile ceasefire deal.

“This was a ‘get your a** to the negotiating table’ message,” a person familiar with the told Politico. The aide went on to compare it to Trump’s threats of a trade war with Canada and Mexico. “It was just  25 per cent tariffs on Canada," he remarked. Despite being aware of the plan, Trump’s team did little to nothing to prepare the world for what would come out of the president’s mouth.

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The international community was left shocked after Trump pitched to relocate nearly 2 million Palestinians from their homeland in Gaza so that the United States could “take over” the area and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

‘No written plan’: White House

While clarifying Trump’s remarks, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt made it clear that there was “no written plan” regarding this. She went on to contradict the president’s comments earlier by insisting that any sort of relocation of the Palestinians from the coastal strip would be temporary.

The comments from the White House came after many of Trump’s allies in Congress and around the globe were caught off guard and some of them were even furious. Amid the chaos, Trump’s team managed to walk back on many of the details Trump laid out a few hours earlier.

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Leavitt, for example, said there were no current plans to involve American troops and no taxpayer dollars would be spent in the region. Another senior official in Trump’s team said that his blunt statement that the US would “own and be responsible” for the Gaza Strip should be seen as a broad expression of his determination to lead the rebuilding process in the coastal region.

“What ‘ownership’ looks like will be determined as we go through a process,” the official told Politico. “But what’s most important is that he’s going to own the leadership position," he added. Similarly, Mike Waltz, the president’s national security adviser, insisted that Trump’s proposal should be seen as his intention to play a leading role in the Middle East.

“The fact that nobody has a realistic solution, and he puts some very bold, fresh, new ideas out on the table, I don’t think should be criticized in any way,” Waltz said in an interview with CBS News. “I think it’s going to bring the entire region to come up with their own solutions," he furthered.

The remarks did not sit well with the US’s Arab allies

Despite the damage control by the White House, Arab allies have not yet viewed Trump’s proposal as constructive. In the middle of the night, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry issued a statement reaffirming its “complete rejection of any infringement on the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, whether through Israeli settlement policies, annexation of Palestinian lands or attempts to displace the Palestinian people from their land.”

Meanwhile, Jordan’s King Abdullah told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he and his country reject “any attempts to annex lands and displace Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank” and stressed “the need to establish the Palestinians on their land.” It is pertinent to note that Trump is scheduled to meet the Jordanian king next week. He has also spoken to the Saudi crown prince by phone since taking office, but it is not clear whether the plans to take over Gaza were discussed.

However, the backlash from within and outside the United States is not deterring Trump’s White House. “The initial reaction [of leaders] does not always match the finish line,” the administration official said, recalling how Colombia’s president initially turned away US military planes returning undocumented migrants before reversing course in the face of Trump’s threat to impose sweeping tariffs. “His initial reaction to migrant relocation was pretty defiant, but that collapsed quickly," he concluded.

With inputs from agencies.