Trump And Gaza, Migrants At Guantanamo, USAID Staff On Leave
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President Trump called for the U.S. to take territory in the Middle East. He says the U.S. should own Gaza, displacing 1.8 million residents to develop seaside real estate. What do other countries think?
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President Trump is talking of another territorial acquisition by the United States.
He says he wants the U.S. to take over Gaza, the current home of many Palestinians. Trump brought up the idea during a visit to the White House by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. 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.
Turn it into seaside real estate. The president did not rule out the possibility of using U.S. troops while sending the current residents to live somewhere else not yet named. In just over two weeks since his inauguration, the president has called for the U.S. to take over a total of four countries or territories, Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and now a war-torn 25-mile strip of land on the Mediterranean.
Joining us now to discuss is NPR international correspondent Ayyab Atrawi in Dubai. So what's President Trump's vision of Gaza look like?
Well, Trump already signaled clearly many times that he thinks Palestinians should be relocated outside of Gaza. And he says Gaza is now a demolition site, that it's uninhabitable. And this is largely true after nearly 16 months of war and Israeli airstrikes that also killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians, with the U.N. and Gaza's health officials saying at least 10,000 more bodies are buried under that rubble. Now, rather than live in what he called a hellhole, Trump said yesterday the nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza should go elsewhere, other countries.
This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12. It could be numerous sites or it could be one large site.
It's really unclear if this is actual policy ideas being formulated or his musings at this point. But Trump, who's an international real estate developer as well, said he envisions the U.S. taking over this coastal enclave long term and turning it into what he called the Riviera of the Middle East.
We're going to take over that piece. We're going to develop it, create thousands and thousands of jobs. And it'll be something that the entire Middle East can be very proud of.
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