Consider This from NPR - Trump's Plan for Gaza: American intervention and mass relocation

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

President Trump floated two stunning ideas about Gaza on Tuesday. The first is he said the U.S. would take over the territory, which has been devastated by the recent war.And, he said the entire population of Gaza would be relocated to other countries. Trump offered no specifics for his plans sending Palestinians and Israelis scrambling to understand what he means.President Trump's vague plan to "Make Gaza Beautiful Again" could signal the largest shift in US-Middle East policy in decades and could upend widespread hope for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.orgEmail us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, and now... 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. That's right, Gaza. It's an addition to the growing list reflecting President Donald Trump's expansionist vision. The president did not offer many specifics for his Gaza plan, nor did he rule out the possibility of deploying U.S. troops to

make it happen. Trump made that announcement standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who offered no details of his own, only smiles and praise for Trump. I believe, Mr. President, that your willingness to puncture conventional thinking, thinking that has failed time and time and time again, your willingness to think outside the box with fresh ideas, will help us achieve all these goals. President Trump called Gaza a demolition site and a symbol of death and destruction.

The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. And so he floated another idea. We should go to other countries of interest with humanitarian hearts, and there are many of them that want to do this, and build various domains that will ultimately be occupied by the 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza." It's not clear who Trump is talking about when he says many want to do this. The list of those who don't is long. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said, quote, we will not allow the rights of our people, for which we have struggled for decades and made great sacrifices to achieve, to be infringed upon. The UN Human Rights Office said, any forcible transfer in or deportation of people from

occupied territory is strictly prohibited, and Human Rights Watch deemed it a moral abomination. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan all oppose attempts to displace Palestinians. Also in opposition, Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, Brazil, China, Russia, the list goes on and on. And yet, despite the growing global condemnation of his plan, at another event on Wednesday, President Trump continued to insist. On Wednesday, the White House walked back some of the president's remarks, including whether the US military could be deployed to Gaza. Consider this. President Trump's vague plan to make Gaza beautiful again could signal the largest shift

in U.S. Middle East policy in decades. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Our long national nightmare is over. Beyoncé has finally won the Grammy for Album of the Year. How and why did it take so long for Beyoncé to win won the Grammy for Album of the Year. How and why did it take so long for Beyoncé to win the top prize at Music's Biggest Night? We're talking about her big wins and breaking down the Grammys for Kendrick Lamar, Chappell Rhone, and Sabrina Carpenter. Listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. President Trump floated two stunning ideas about Gaza on Tuesday.

The first is he said the US would take over the territory, which has been devastated by the recent war. And he said the entire population of Gaza would be relocated to other countries. Trump offered no specifics for his plans, sending Palestinians and Israelis scrambling to understand what he means. From Tel Aviv, and here's Daniel Astrid reports. Audacity is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump celebrated at the White House. Netanyahu gave Trump a golden pager commemorating Israel's exploding pager attack last year against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then Trump floated his proposal to empty Gaza and take it over.

And Netanyahu praised Trump. You say things others refuse to say. And on after the jaws drop, people scratch their heads and they say, you know, he's right. Palestinian leaders in Saudi Arabia have rejected the removal of Palestinians from Gaza. Former Israeli officials are casting doubt on the viability of a US takeover.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. So the day that I will see American soldiers coming in great numbers to Gaza, I will then make up my mind how serious it is. Right now, every party involved except for Israel is completely against it. The U.S. is now involved in two Middle Eastern negotiations, one to get Hamas to give up its control of Gaza and release all Israeli hostages, and another to get Saudi Arabia to establish ties with Israel.

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wonders if Trump could be employing a negotiating tactic. Maybe this is a tactical sort of move that tries to say a big thing in order to eventually get a more modest solution. Trump's endorsement of expelling Palestinians from their land helps Netanyahu stay in power and keep together his far-right allies, who have threatened to walk away because they want Israel to resume fighting in Gaza. Israeli columnist, Nadav Eyal. This is for Netanyahu like winning the lottery. First of all, because this is seen by the Israeli public as a major win politically,

presenting an idea that was actually part of the Israeli right-wing fringe until a few years back, now as a plan by the great United States. Politically, this gives him oxygen to survive within his government. Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, said Palestinians want to rebuild Gaza after a devastating war, not abandon Gaza. Because this is where they belong and they love to live there. You know, leaders and people should respect the wishes of the Palestinian people. Trump said he wants to help Palestinians by sending Gaza's nearly 2 million residents

to other countries. It would be my hope that we could do something really nice, really good, where they wouldn't want to return. Why would they want to return? The place has been hell. In Gaza City, which has been largely destroyed in the recent war, NPR producer Anas Baba asked young Palestinians what they want. Bassam Abdelraouf, 29, said,

Even if there were a place a million times better than Gaza, even if life there would be luxurious, I would still live among the rubble and intense here. I do not know how to describe what our love for Gaza means. Another man, 30-year-old Yahya Barakat, said he'd take Trump up on the offer. He said, my home is gone, my life is gone, my future is gone. If I find a country that provides me with safety and a good life, I will leave my homeland." That was NPR's Daniel Estrin reporting from Tel Aviv. In the first major Israeli-Arab war in 1948, many Palestinians were driven from their homes

and sought shelter in Gaza. The direct descendants of those refugees make up most of Gaza's population today. So, President Trump struck an extremely sensitive nerve when he called for uprooting all Palestinians in Gaza. Empire's Greg Myrie has made dozens of reporting trips to Gaza. We reached him in Damascus, Syria. Walk us back in the history and explain in a little more detail why so many Palestinian refugees came to be concentrated in this tiny strip, the Gaza Strip. Yeah, the 1948 war was really the critical moment.

Israel had just declared statehood and was immediately at war with several Arab countries, as well as the Palestinians who didn't have a state then or now. Hundreds of thousands of civilians fled or were driven from their homes, and many are Palestinians who went to Gaza. So now you have this large refugee population, and the very young, new United Nations sets up a refugee agency just for the Palestinians, which helps the Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries. This same arrangement has remained in place to this day, and the descendants of those original refugees are still classified as refugees, even if they were born in Gaza and have lived

there all their lives. Jared Sussman Yeah. Understanding that there's, of course, a range of views, if Palestinians in Gaza had their choice, how would they like to see this resolved? Certainly, the dream for many has been to return to their former homes, which are now inside Israel's internationally recognized borders. In Gaza and other areas, Palestinians will often show you around their homes and they'll proudly display these large oversized rusting keys and yellowing land deed documents to those former family homes. But Israel's always rejected a large-scale return of Palestinian refugees saying it would be swamped demographically. And during periodic

peace talks over the years the focus has been on making Gaza part of a Palestinian state that would also include the West Bank and a capital in East Jerusalem. So when President Trump comes along and says Palestinians in Gaza should be uprooted because the US is going to take over, based on your experience, is there any reason to think some Palestinians would be willing to leave Gaza? Palestinians in general and the refugees in particular harbor this deep fear of being displaced ever since the trauma of 1948, which they call the Nakba or the catastrophe. And Trump's comments really struck that chord.

It's just hard to see how you'd ever get past such a core emotional issue. We just seen more than 15 months of a devastating war in Gaza, and very few Palestinians left during that time. A couple reasons for this. First, they really couldn't. Israel blocked its borders. Egypt, which is sympathetic to the Palestinians, kept its border with Gaza closed except for aid deliveries. A very small number of Palestinians did bribe their way out of Gaza to Egypt at the cost of thousands of dollars, a very small number of Palestinians did bribe their way out of Gaza to Egypt at the cost of thousands of dollars, but very few, very little sign that they would want to leave.

Hmm. So if Trump gets his way, if the US were to take over Gaza, just give us a quick rundown some of the practical and some of the political issues that you'd have to get passed. Yeah. I mean, how do you get two million people to move when they don't want to? The US would have to consider sending a large number of troops. They'd immediately become targets for Palestinian militants. This would be a massive, complicated, open-ended operation.

And on the political side, the US simply has no legal authority to take over Gaza, and forcibly removing civilians from their territory violates international law. It's hard to imagine the US building international support. It would certainly harm relations throughout the Middle East and probably far beyond. And peers, Greg Myrie and Damascus will leave it there for now. Thank you. Sure thing, Mary Louise. This episode was produced by Mia Venkat, Alina Burnett, Michael Levitt, and Alejandra Marquez-Hanse. It was edited by Courtney Dornig, James Heider, Nishant Tijia, Ryland Barton, Patrick Jaranwadanan, and Nadia Lansi.

Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Consider This sponsor free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Consider This Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.