By Joshua Arnold

President Donald Trump certainly knows how to entertain … and surprise … and keep the initiative. In fact, he knows how to drop the sorts of bombshells that leave everyone wondering, what just happened?

On Tuesday, President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, “the first [meeting] with a foreign leader since his second term in office,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins noted. That decision — and the restored relationship between the U.S. and our close ally Israel — was newsworthy in and of itself, but Trump’s remarks at a post-meeting press conference jolted coverage to a whole new level.

Proposal

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip,” Trump declared, “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. 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.”

“This was not a decision made lightly,” Trump continued. “Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land. Developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know. Nobody can look because all they see is death, and destruction, and rubble.”

In fact, Trump imagined rebuilding the Gaza Strip into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” a tourist destination with a desirable climate, protected by U.S. troops if necessary. With an estimated price tag of up to $80 billion, Trump suggested that “neighboring countries of great wealth” could help pay for it, turning the strip into a sort of international zone. And, of course, many Palestinian refugees would have to find a new home somewhere else.

The sweeping vision was sure to capture headlines. Here was a real estate tycoon turned president, appraising waterfront property with a developer’s eye. Trump and his critics agree about one thing: the bombed-out territory desperately needs to be rebuilt. But where others saw only rubble, Trump saw the potential for prosperity.

Trump’s proposal was so unexpected, so out-of-the-box that analysts have struggled to even process its implications. I confess that it even left me, a professional writer, feeling as lost for words as an upturned Scrabble board.

Among the various obstacles to a U.S.-run Gaza makeover, National Review’s Philip Klein mentions: (1) opposition from Palestinians, (2) opposition from Arab nations, (3) a lack of authority to justify U.S. involvement, and (4) the hazards of placing American troops in another Middle Eastern outpost. Whether Trump can navigate around those obstacles is a question as yet unanswered. Considering the uncertainty of this future vision for Gaza, Trump’s proposal has provoked a multitude of reactions.

Reactions

Let’s begin on Trump’s right, where Netanyahu was not about to pour cold water on the once-and-again president’s scheme. “I mentioned again tonight our three goals and the third goal is to make sure that Gaza never poses a threat to Israel again,” he said. “President Trump is taking it to a much higher level. He sees a different future for that piece of land that has been the focus of so much terrorism, so many attacks against us, so many trials and so many tribulations. He has a different idea, and I think it’s worth paying attention to this. … I think it’s something that could change history.”

Thankful to once again have an ally in the White House, instead of a veiled adversary, Netanyahu heaped praise upon Trump. “Your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas, will help us achieve all these goals,” he gushed. “I’ve seen you do this many times. You cut to the chase. You see things others refuse to see. You say things others refuse to say. And after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads, and they say, ‘You know, he’s right.’”

Netanyahu’s praise was not merely empty words. During his first term, Trump convinced four Arab countries to normalize relations with Israel in the Abraham Accords, the greatest progress toward Middle Eastern peace that any president has achieved in half a century.

Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media had a far less charitable reaction. Somehow, editors at the Associated Press allowed the terms “brazen proposal” and “provocative comments” to slip into a piece masquerading as straight news. (This is the same AP who claimed to have no idea that Hamas was operating out of the same building as their Gaza headquarters, when Israel destroyed it in 2021.)

Congressional Democrats likewise held back no criticism. “He’s completely lost it,” exclaimed Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “He wants a U.S. invasion of Gaza, which would cost thousands of American lives and set the Middle East on fire for 20 years? It’s sick.”

But the president’s allies responded more calmly. When reporters asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio — in Guatemala, still continuing his Latin American tour — he replied, “The only thing President Trump has done — very generously, in my view — is offer the United States’ willingness to step in, clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction that’s on the ground, clean it up of all these unexploded munitions.” While the details “would have to be worked out among multiple partner nations,” he said the plan “was not meant as a hostile move.”

Meanwhile, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz proposed a method to Trump’s apparently chaotic proposal. While “everybody’s heart breaks for the Palestinian people across the region and rightly so,” he told CBS News, President Trump had seen no “realistic solutions” for how to rebuild Gaza amid “those miles and miles and miles of debris.” He suggested that Trump’s plan “is going to bring the entire region to come [up] with their own solutions.”

In fact, Trump has already displayed similar tactics in negotiations with Canada, Mexico, and Colombia, by threatening to impose disastrous tariffs, but ultimately calling them off and reaching more modest deals.

For their part, Middle Eastern Arab states are none too happy about the deal Trump proposed. Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry responded by underscoring their “firm, steadfast, and unwavering position” in support of an independent Palestinian state. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi also poured cold water on the idea that his country would import Palestinian refugees from the Gaza Strip.

Will their discomfort at Trump’s bold suggestion force these states to propose their own solutions? “We don’t know what the ultimate play will be here,” Klein reflected. “It’s quite possible, as has happened in the past, that Trump is saying something outrageous to shake things up and freak everybody out, and then he will ultimately be open to pursuing more conventional ends.”

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.