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Even GOP Lawmakers Are Dumbfounded by Trump’s Gaza Plan

“I don’t know that I think it’s the best use of United States resources,” said Sen. Josh Hawley of the president’s proposal for a U.S. takeover of the territory.

President Donald Trump’s plan to seize the Gaza Strip and turn the Palestinian territory into a “Riviera of the Middle East” drew immediate condemnation from human rights groups, foreign allies, and Democrats.

But his shock announcement Tuesday also left many of his fellow Republicans perplexed.

“I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most enthusiastic boosters, told reporters. “I think that might be problematic, but I’ll keep an open mind.”

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Sen. Josh Hawley echoed Graham, telling Politico that he did not think sending troops to the Palestinian enclave was the right move.

“I don’t know that I think it’s the best use of United States resources to spend a bunch of money in Gaza, I think maybe I’d prefer that to be spent in the United States first,” he said. “But let’s see what happens.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, who recently criticized Trump over his pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters and has pledged to be a bulwark against the president in Congress, sounded doubtful: “There are probably a couple of kinks in that Slinky, but I’ll have to take a look at the statement.”

Sen. John Hoeven suggested Trump was deploying a negotiating tactic, an idea that was echoed Wednesday morning by Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy, who called the announcement an “opening salvo.”

“I think that’s the first step in a negotiation,“ Doocy said on the Fox News morning chat show. ”Because he said the United States will redevelop it and the Palestinians will go someplace else. I think that’s the first step. Now people are going, ‘No, you can’t do that.’ And he’ll go, ‘OK, if we don’t redevelop it, who will?‘”

Justin Amash, a Republican former congressman whose Palestinian Christian father was expelled from his home by Israeli forces in 1948, expressed dismay and accused Trump of advocating for ethnic cleansing.

“If the United States deploys troops to forcibly remove Muslims and Christians—like my cousins—from Gaza, then not only will the US be mired in another reckless occupation but it will also be guilty of the crime of ethnic cleansing,“ he tweeted. ”No American of good conscience should stand for this.”

Trump declared that the United States will “take over” Gaza, adding he envisioned a “long-term” American ownership of the coastal enclave that would involve the expulsion of its people to Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab states, none of which have agreed to take them.

The president offered no explanation for how this would be carried out or what legal authority the U.S. had to seize the Palestinian territory.

Gaza, home to 2.1 million people, was bombarded by Israeli forces for more than a year after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, leaving 60 percent of buildings destroyed and roughly 61,000 presumed missing or dead. A ceasefire agreement was reached last month, though negotiations are ongoing to guarantee a more permanent truce.

“We will own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site,” Trump said, during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington.

He added that the U.S. would “create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”

Forced displacement of the Gazan population would very likely violate international law and face stiff pushback from countries in the Middle East and Washington’s allies elsewhere.

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Sean Craig

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