Trump’s Gaza ‘Riviera’ plan is the most outlandish idea in the history of US Middle East peacemakingCNN —
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu couldn’t keep the smirk off his face.
And no wonder.
Netanyahu looked on in the White House on Tuesday as President Donald Trump delivered the most stunning US intervention in the long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The president repeatedly doubled down on his suggestion that nearly 2 million Palestinians should be relocated from battle-leveled Gaza to new homes elsewhere so that the US could send troops to the Strip, take ownership and build the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
“You build really good quality housing, like a beautiful town, like some place where they can live and not die, because Gaza is a guarantee that they’re going to end up dying,” Trump told reporters.
In a few words, Trump conjured up a mind-boggling geopolitical transformation of the Middle East and a political lifeline for Netanyahu – showing why the prime minister, despite their past tensions, was rooting for his host’s return to power in the 2024 election.
Netanyahu can now bill himself to right-wing factions in his coalition, which incessantly threaten his grip on power, as the unique and vital conduit to Trump. The American president’s views now parallel Israeli hardliners’ desire to see Palestinians ousted from part of what they view as the sacred land of Israel.
Israel’s far-right former national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who quit Netanyahu’s war cabinet earlier this year to protest the Gaza ceasefire deal, confirmed the synergy between Trump’s thinking and extreme conservatives in Israel.
“Donald, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” he wrote in a post on X. .............
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/05/politics/trump-gaza-takeover-analysis/index.html