“No American of good conscience should stand for this,” he said.
Trump earlier suggested displaced Palestinians in Gaza be “permanently” resettled outside the war-torn territory in what he said would be “beautiful” new towns in nearby Arab nations funded by other countries or unnamed wealthy people.
He argued the 15-month war between Israel and Hamas that has destroyed much of the territory meant Gazans would no longer want to return or live there. Many have already returned over the past two weeks following the ceasefire despite the widespread destruction of homes and infrastructure.
“The only reason they want to go back, and I believe this strongly, is because they had no alternative,” Trump said. “If they had an alternative, they’d much rather not go back to Gaza. You can’t live in Gaza right now, and I think we need another location. Gaza has been very unlucky for them. They live like they’re living in hell.”
It was not just the 15 months of brutal warfare that followed Hamas’ 2023 attacks, Trump suggested, but decades of violence in the Arab-Israeli conflict that had rendered Gaza unfeasible for habitation.
“You look over the decades, it’s all death in Gaza … Gaza is a guarantee they’re going to end up dying. The same thing is going to happen again. It has happened over and over again, and it’s going to happen again as sure as you’re standing there.”
Trump and Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House.Credit: Bloomberg
The president previously floated the idea of resettling Palestinians in Egypt and Jordan, and made the case to leaders of both countries. But they – along with Arab neighbours – rejected the proposal, saying they opposed forced displacement of Palestinians from their homeland and supported a two-state solution.
On Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT), Trump said he believed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah might change their minds, pointing to his apparent success in negotiating concessions from Canada and Mexico after threatening tariffs.
But he also claimed Gazans could be resettled in other countries. “You could build four or five or six areas, it doesn’t have to be one area … and you build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, some place where they can live and not die,” he said.
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The private meeting and joint press conference marked the first official White House visit by a foreign head of state in the second Trump presidency. The visit also represented a return to warmer relations between the two men after Trump criticised Netanyahu while he was out of office.
Netanyahu heaped praise on Trump, calling him “the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House”. He ran through a list of Trump’s actions from his first term and the past two weeks, which included Tuesday’s announcement the US would withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council and stop funding its agency assisting Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA.
“All this in two weeks? Can you imagine where we’ll be in four years?” Netanyahu said.
Asked whether a US takeover of Gaza would hamper efforts to normalise relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, which is contingent on a two-state solution, Netanyahu did not answer directly but was buoyant about a deal.
“I think peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia is not only feasible, I think it’s going to happen,” he said. “You can’t prejudge and preguess how we’ll achieve it but I’m committing to achieving it.”
A view of an area in Gaza City destroyed during fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas. Credit: AP
In a statement released shortly after the news conference, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry reiterated it would not establish ties with Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state, saying the kingdom’s stance was firm and unwavering.
Netanyahu said Israel and the US would try to ensure the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas progressed to its planned second stage. In an apparent slight at Joe Biden’s administration, Netanyahu suggested the goal was easier with Trump in charge.
“When Israel and the United States work together, when President Trump and I work together, the chances go up a lot,” he said. “It’s when we don’t work together … that creates problems. When the other side sees daylight between us, and occasionally in the last few years, to put it mildly, they saw daylight, then it’s more difficult.”
Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, told CNN that Trump’s plan to clear out Gaza violated international law and amounted to ethnic cleansing.
“This is a population that has been displaced multiple times over – many in 1948, many again in 1967, many multiple times since 2023,” he said.
“It’s very clear that Palestinians do not want to be displaced and that they want to return to their homes, not just in Gaza but the homes they were kicked out of inside Israel in 1948.”
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