Trump said in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier that Palestinians would not have a right to return to Gaza under his new plan.Ben Curtis/AP
President Donald Trump is doubling down—in strikingly transactional and inhumane terms—on his stated plan to take over Gaza, force out Palestinians, and block them from returning after the devastating war with Israel.
In a new clip previewing a forthcoming interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, Trump described his widely panned plan to “own” and develop the Gaza Strip while forcibly relocating two million Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan.
“I would own this,” he said. “Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land, no big money spent.”
Trump claimed that the eventual goal would be to build “safe communities”—but did not specify who they would be for, where they would be located, or if Palestinians would be welcome there.
“We’ll build beautiful communities for the 1.9 million people. We’ll build beautiful communities, safe communities. Could be five, six. Could be two. But we’ll build safe communities—a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” Trump told Baier, without offering further specifics.
“Would the Palestinians have the right to return?” Baier interrupted to ask.
BAIER: Would the Palestinians have the right to return to Gaza?
TRUMP: No, they wouldn’t pic.twitter.com/kL8ZhWXMPa
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 10, 2025
“No, they wouldn’t,” Trump replied bluntly, “because they’re going to have much better—in other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them. Because if they have to return now, it’ll be years before you could have a—it’s not habitable. It would be years before it could happen. I’m talking about starting to build. I think I could make a deal with Jordan, I think I could make a deal with Egypt—we give them billions and billions of dollars a year.”
Trump made similar comments on Air Force One on Sunday, en route to the Super Bowl in New Orleans: “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza,” he said. “The place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished…we’ll make it into a very good site for future development by somebody. We’ll let other countries develop parts of it, it’ll be beautiful. People can come from all over the world and live there. But we’re going to take care of the Palestinians,” he claimed, without elaborating on where they would live. He went on to passively describe Gaza as “the most dangerous site anywhere in the world to live in,” without acknowledging Israel’s role in the war—prompted by the Oct. 7, 2o23 Hamas attack that killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages—that has reportedly killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, including more than 17,000 children, as my colleague Noah Lanard pointed out last week.
President Trump committed to “buying and owning Gaza” in Air Force One comments#trump #gaza #military pic.twitter.com/2WiC0660QL
— Military Times (@MilitaryTimes) February 10, 2025
The latest comments amount to Trump’s doubling down on a plan that the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described as “ethnic cleansing” after Trump first floated it last week at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the White House. Trump’s comments then—that the US would “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”—caused such alarm that administration officials quickly appeared to walk them back. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a subsequent press briefing: “The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza” and that the US wouldn’t pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. Eventually, she conceded that Trump’s proposal was “an out-of-the-box idea.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that if Palestinians were relocated, it would be temporary—but Trump’s latest comments, to Baier, suggest he envisions the Palestinians’ potential expulsion from the land as permanent. (While a reporter asked at last week’s press conference whether or not Trump would support Palestinians returning, he did not answer directly.) Several congressional Republicans, including Trump allies, also raised concerns about the feasibility of the plan—which Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, and Jordan have all rejected.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions Monday seeking clarification.
The doubling down on such a controversial plan makes clear that, as Noah wrote last week:
Trump sees the world through the lens of real estate deals, not morality or international law. That was obvious in the press conference. “We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal,” he explained about his Gaza proposal. “And I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so—this could be so magnificent.” His rhetoric was in line with that of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has gushed about how Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable.”
While Trump ponders violating international law, thousands of internally displaced Palestinians have been returning to northern Gaza. Mohammed al-Faran, 40, told the Washington Post last month that he and his wife, three kids, mother, and nephew walked seven hours in a draining journey from Deir al-Balah to Gaza City.
The scene he returned to, he told the newspaper, was “devastating — worse than I had imagined.” Even so, “we were determined to return from the very first day,” al-Farhan said, “unsure of what the future holds.”
