- Trump administration staffers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, put qualifiers on the president’s call for the U.S. to own the Gaza Strip. Rubio said Trump only offered to help clean up the damage in Gaza.
- The president said Tuesday that he believes “long-term ownership” of the Gaza Strip would bring stability to the Middle East during comments alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- Nearly two million Palestinian people live in Gaza. The U.S. has not committed to allowing them to stay. Trump has called for other countries to take them in.
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Less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump proposed the U.S. take “long-term ownership” of the Gaza Strip and send the military in if needed, several of the president’s allies are putting some qualifiers on his statement.
Both allies and adversaries of the U.S. panned the proposal. Germany and Saudi Arabia joined Russia and China in rejecting or criticizing the idea.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, America’s top diplomat, said the president only offered U.S. help in cleaning up the damage Gaza suffered in the war.
“The only thing President Trump has done very generously, in my view, is offer the United States willingness to step in, clear the debris, clean the place up from all the destruction that’s on the ground, clean it up of all these unexploded munitions,” Rubio said.
Rubio said he hoped cleanup would allow people to move back into Gaza but did not specifically mention Palestinians.
Approximately two million Palestinian people currently live in the Gaza Strip. Most wish to govern themselves, while members of the Israeli government have suggested Israel should drive the Palestinians out and control the area.
President Trump has asked neighboring countries, including Egypt and Jordan, about taking Palestinians in, but they have rejected the proposal.
The president’s call for a Gaza takeover is in line with his previous calls to add Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone to U.S. territory. However, expansion abroad, including possible military deployments, would undercut some of his “America First” promises to pare down U.S. involvement abroad and in what he called “forever wars.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also added that the president was not committing to putting U.S. troops on the ground in Gaza.
“The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza,” Leavitt said. “He has also said that the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. His administration is going to work with our partners in the region to reconstruct this region.”
Now, the president’s Gaza comments are creating a rift among his allies in Congress.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called the proposal a “bold, decisive action.” At the same time, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a key Trump ally in the Senate, told reporters Wednesday, Feb. 5, that he believed the proposal was “problematic.”
