US President Donald Trump has once again stirred controversy with his proposal to “take over” Gaza, relocate its Palestinian population, and turn the war-torn enclave into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
The comments, made during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, drew broad condemnation, with even some of President Trump’s allies questioning the feasibility of such a drastic measure.
Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, a policy, diplomacy, and communication center, told The Media Line that President Trump’s proposal would meet a harsh response from the Arab world. That’s problematic for a proposal that depends on Israel’s neighboring countries taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from Gaza.
A more strategic move would have been to encourage Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states to quietly mediate a plan for relocating Palestinians from Gaza. “But by making a public declaration, Trump eliminated any chance of Arab buy-in,” Diker said.
He said that President Trump’s economic and military assistance, particularly to Egypt and Jordan, gives him substantial leverage over Arab states in helping them accept his far-reaching Gaza proposal.
“The bigger issue is how the Arab world perceives US intervention,” he explained. “They see everything the US does as an Israeli-Zionist conspiracy to take over Arab lands. This is an ideological obstacle that money alone cannot solve.”
He said that such a context also makes comparisons to post-World War II deradicalization efforts in Europe less appropriate. “The Marshall Plan and denazification worked because the US led a Western coalition in Germany and Japan. But this is not the Arab Muslim Middle East. The ideological and strategic context is entirely different,” he said.
President Trump’s proposal also faces many legal barriers. Eliav Lieblich, a professor of international law at Tel Aviv University, noted that imposing foreign rule on Gaza would require either local consent or a binding resolution from the UN Security Council. “Both would be impossible based on Trump’s ideas,” Lieblich told The Media Line.
Eitan Diamond, senior legal expert at Jerusalem’s Diakonia International Humanitarian Law Center, said that the proposed US takeover would violate both the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against any state’s territorial integrity or political independence.
Similarly, Suhad Bishara, legal director of the Palestinian-run legal center Adalah, said that international law recognizes Palestinians’ legal right to self-determination in Gaza as well as Gazans’ status as Palestinian refugees. “Gaza is recognized as occupied Palestinian territory subject to ongoing Israeli military occupation and is part of historic Palestine,” Bishara told The Media Line.
“UN Resolution 194 affirms that Palestinian refugees have the right to return to their homes from which they were displaced, a right that cannot be negated by land ownership,” she continued.
Alongside the questions of strategy and legality are questions of feasibility. Diker said that relocating all 2.1 million residents of Gaza would likely be very difficult, even though many Gazans are interested in leaving. “Thirty to thirty-five percent of Gazans would leave if given the opportunity and financial means,” he said. “This number is likely much higher, but it isn’t reflected in public polling due to fear of Hamas retribution.”
Both Hamas and Iran pose obstacles to the mass relocation of Gazans, even though the population itself is interested, Diker said. Hamas and Iran view President Trump’s proposal as “a direct threat to their jihadist ideology and not as a chance for the people to rehabilitate and return to a peaceful Gaza,” he said.
Diamond, though, stressed that any forced displacement would constitute a war crime. “Forcing Palestinians to relocate, including by creating circumstances that coerce them to do so, would amount to an act of deportation or forcible transfer,” he told The Media Line. “These acts are serious violations of international humanitarian law and classified as war crimes.”
Even if such displacement were framed as voluntary, coercion through economic and military pressure would invalidate claims of free choice, he said.
Dotan Halevy, a senior history lecturer at Tel Aviv University with a focus on the Middle East and Gaza, said that there are more important questions than whether the US could feasibly achieve its plan of relocating Gaza’s Palestinians and taking control over the strip. “If the US is thinking about whether an equipped army with a lot of force has the power to do it, then the answer is yes—of course,” Halevy told The Media Line. “But first, the question is: is it morally right to do that? Would it be politically wise? And whose interest would such a move serve?”
“Trump suggests Gaza could become a Trump international tourist destination, a completely redesigned, rehabilitated enclave. But let’s remember—this is the Middle East, where ideology, extremism, and radicalism play a central role,” he continued.
Finding a solution for Gaza's future
While President Trump’s proposal faces overwhelming opposition on the basis of strategy, legality, morality, and feasibility, it does highlight the real challenge of finding a solution for the future of Gaza. Even those who criticize the president are not necessarily sure what a sustainable solution would look like that doesn’t rely on forced displacement, military intervention, or unilateral decision-making by external powers.
According to US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, promoting creative alternative solutions was actually the point of President Trump’s announcement. Speaking to CBS News on Wednesday, Waltz said that the proposal was meant to encourage Israel’s Arab neighbors to propose their own solutions to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. He said that Trump’s plan was presented as a last resort because other countries had not come up with better solutions.
Lieblich, though, said that the announcement of the plan has already caused damage, even if it doesn’t come to fruition. “By voicing these ideas, an American president normalizes discussions about forced displacement and territorial acquisition by force, which were previously considered unacceptable,” he said.
Israeli far-right leaders Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have openly called for the “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians from Gaza and advocated for the resettlement of Gaza, arguing that reestablishing Jewish settlements in the enclave is the only way to ensure Israel’s long-term security. Discussions of resettling Gaza and “transferring” the Palestinians have become more and more common in mainstream Israeli discourse. That context makes President Trump’s statements even more concerning for Bishara, who described Trump’s plan as “a direct continuation of the nearly 16-month genocidal assault on Palestinians in Gaza, with the US complicit, and decades of military occupation.”
International legal scholars and Middle East experts’ criticisms of the Trump proposal as legally untenable, diplomatically damaging, and politically unrealistic seem unlikely to sway the president from his plan. The outcome of the impasse between the Palestinians’ immovable claim to their homeland and Trump’s unstoppable desire to redesign Middle Eastern geopolitics remains to be seen.