Trump Plans Taking Over and Cleansing the Gaza Strip

Photo Credit: Avi Ohayon (GPO)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, February 4, 2025.

Words with such a reality-changing impact on the future of the Middle East and the Jewish people have not been spoken since British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote Lord Rothchild: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

“The US will take over the Gaza Strip,” President Donald J. Trump said in a press conference with visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday. “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East.”

Like Balfour, President Trump marked an irreversible turn in the short history of Jewish revival in Eretz Israel, and with that a fitting conclusion to the psychologically stunted decision of the Arabs to reject the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine that called for both Jews and Arabs to coexist in peace. Over the next 78 years, the Western nations tolerated the Arabs’ bloodlust and hatred, blaming most of it on the Jews for their insolent survival of Arab hostility, until yesterday, when an unusually practical American president put a stop to the charade.

If the Arabs of Gaza can’t get along with their Jewish neighbors, he said effectively, they’ll go away.

Rechavam Ze’evi / Flash 90

Not only the European powers, or the Arabs – even the vast majority of Israelis have not dared to contemplate such a simple and logical solution. Only one senior Israeli politician, retired Major General and Government Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, advocated the transfer by agreement of 3.3 million Arabs from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to Arab nations. He suggested this could be accomplished by making their lives difficult, so they would relocate on their own, through the use of military force during the next military clash with an Arab neighbor, or by agreement with Arab nations.

Ze’evi was assassinated by four Arab gunmen in the Jerusalem Hyatt Hotel on Mount Scopus on October 17, 2001. We must pray that God protects President Trump, who is essentially implementing the Rehavam Ze’evi plan.

President Trump wants the US to assume long-term control of Gaza and advocated for the permanent relocation of nearly two million Arab residents to neighboring countries, marking a sharp departure from decades of US policy and thoroughly undermining prospects for a Palestinian state.

Yes, folks, it’s the stuff assassinations are made of.

Trump’s plan would involve the US in a massive development project that administration officials estimate could take 10 to 15 years. Trump did not clarify how the US would persuade Gaza Arabs to willingly immigrate to their new homes away from the hellish Strip, but, you know, the same Gaza Arabs willingly paid Hamas and Egyptian thugs from five to ten thousand US dollars per head to be allowed to flee, imagine if they could escape for free.

Trump also did not announce whether Israel would ultimately assert sovereignty over Gaza. Instead, while not explicitly endorsing deploying US forces to secure the Strip, he also did not rule out the possibility—raising the prospect of a prolonged American military presence there.

Kind of the British mandatory government of Palestine that followed the Balfour Declaration.

IT’S REAL ESTATE, STUPID

“I hope we can do something where they wouldn’t want to go back,” Trump said Tuesday night, adding that he would like to see “really good quality housing” built for the migrating Arabs away from Gaza.

Forever the real estate developer, Trump also suggested rebuilding Gaza would provide jobs and stability to the region, possibly implying that the Strip would be open to both Israelis and Arabs.

Itamar Ben Gvir tweeted, “Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

A quick bet: who here believes Itamar Ben Gvir has watched “Casablanca?”

Trump brushed aside the numerous challenges, even speculating that Saudi Arabia might move forward with plans to normalize relations with Israel. However, the Saudi Foreign Ministry pushed back Tuesday night, stating it would not support diplomatic ties with Israel without a clear path toward a Palestinian state. The ministry also firmly opposed any attempts to “displace the Palestinian people from their land.”

There was a bit of cognitive dissonance in the Saudi statement: the majority of Arabs who live in the Gaza Strip are considered by the UN and most of the world’s countries to be refugees from their homes inside Israel. By definition, the Gaza Strip is not their land, otherwise, how can they be refugees there? In other words, they could just as easily dream of their homes in Jaffa and Haifa from, say, Venezuela and Argentina, as they can from Khan Younes.

The Jews have been doing it since the sixth century BCE.