February 5, 2025

In the hours leading up to President Donald Trump’s prime-time press conference Tuesday, his team knew what was coming. He had been discussing an idea for months — a U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip — with advisers, some of whom saw it as a negotiating ploy to give Israeli leaders more leverage over Hamas as they try to turn a fragile cease-fire into a lasting peace.

“This was a ‘get your ass to the negotiating table’ message,” said a person familiar with the president’s thinking who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, comparing it to Trump’s threats of a trade war with America’s neighbors. “It was just like 25 percent tariffs on Canada.”

But even if advisers were aware of the provocation, it was clear Wednesday that they did little to prepare the rest of the world for Trump’s pitch to relocate nearly 2 million Palestinians from their homeland in Gaza so the U.S. could assert ownership of the area and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

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