US President Donald Trump has said that he won’t impose his widely condemned plan to displace the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip by force, but continued to advocate it, saying that it “really works”.
When asked by Fox News Audio host Brian Kilmeade during an interview on Friday what the solution to end the war in Gaza, Trump doubled down on the plan, saying “I’ll tell you, the way to do it is my plan.”
“I think that’s the plan that really works. But I’m not forcing it. I’m just going to sit back and recommend it,” he said.
Trump’s plan, which he has advocated since a ceasefire went into effect in Gaza last January, would see a US takeover of the enclave to lead a redevelopment project that he says would create “the riviera of the Middle East”.
The plan would also see the permanent forced displacement of many of the enclave’s 2 million people.
The Gaza Strip has been utterly devastated by over 15 months of indiscriminate Israeli war, with over 61,000 people killed and the vast majority of the population displaced within the territory multiple times.
Trump said his “redevelopment” plan probably wouldn’t work if the territory’s inhabitants remained in place.
“Another way of doing it, but I don’t think it would work, would be to do it with people there but I just don’t see that working,” he said.
He also claimed that given the choice Palestinians would prefer to live outside of Gaza if it was in “a nice community”.
According to a poll conducted by Zogby Research Services in September 2024, 92 percent of Palestinians in Gaza said that they wanted to return home as soon as the war ended.
“I like my plan, I thought my plan was good, you get them out, you move them you built a beautiful community, and a permanent community.”
He also said he couldn’t understand why Israel “gave up” Gaza and called Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 “one of the bad real estate deals”.
Trump’s plan was widely rejected throughout the Arab World, including by Jordan and Egypt, which he said should take in displaced Gaza residents.
Trump criticised Egypt and Jordan’s opposition to the plan, saying “we pay Jordan and Egypt billions of dollars a year, and I was a little surprised they’d say that.”
On Friday Arab leaders from Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates met in Riyadh to craft a post-war plan for Gaza to counter Trump’s.
