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‘US will take over Gaza Strip’: Donald Trump after talks with Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu
Donald Trump's meeting with Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is his first meeting with a foreign leader since returning to the White House
Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States will “take over and own” the Gaza Strip.
"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,” AP quoted the US president as saying at a joint press conference with Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Trump added that the United States would work economically develop the area after cleaning out the destroyed buildings.
Trump says he and Netanyahu discussed eliminating Hamas.
Both the leaders focused in their closed-door meeting on discussing how Hamas can be eliminated and restoring peace “to a troubled region.”
Kicking off a joint press conference, Trump slammed his predecessor Joe Biden, saying “nobody did anything for four years” in the Middle East except demonstrate incompetence."
According to Bloomberg, Trump insisted that Egypt and Jordan will take in Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, dismissing their stated objection to accepting people from the war-shattered territory.
“They say they’re not going to accept — I say they will,” Trump said at the presser.
Since returning to office, the meeting was Trump’s first with a foreign leader at the White House.
Trump suggested an independent Palestine
On Tuesday, Trump suggested that he might be reconsidering an independent Palestine as part of a broader two-state solution to the decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“Well, a lot of plans change with time,” he told reporters when asked if he was still committed to a plan like the one he laid out in 2020 that called for a Palestinian state.
“A lot of death has occurred since I left and now came back. Now we are faced with a situation that’s different — in some ways better and in some ways worse. But we are faced with a very complex and difficult situation that we’ll solve," Trump added.
(With agency inputs)
