Trump’s plan to ‘take over’ Gaza would be ‘a cataclysm for the Middle East,’ Ambassador Ryan Crocker warns

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s proposal for the United States to “take over” the Gaza Strip, displace the nearly 2 million Palestinians who live there and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East” has drawn skepticism from around the world – including from Eastern Washington.

Retired ambassador and Spokane Valley native Ryan Crocker, a decorated diplomat whom President George W. Bush dubbed “America’s Lawrence of Arabia,” said in an interview on Wednesday that the plan Trump laid out during a news conference on Tuesday would amount to “a cataclysm for the Middle East.”

“To displace the population of Gaza elsewhere into the region would have to be done by force, both to force Gazans out of Gaza – to the tune of nearly 2 million – and to force, literally, other countries to accept them,” Crocker said. “Egypt and Jordan have made it crystal clear that this is an existential red line for them.”

Speaking to reporters alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Trump said he foresees “a long-term ownership position” for the United States in Gaza. The strip of land along the Mediterranean Sea, roughly the size of Seattle, has been under near-constant bombardment by Israel’s military since Hamas, the Palestinian group that governs Gaza and is classified by the U.S. government as a terrorist group, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we’ll do a job with it, too,” Trump said. “This can be paid for by neighboring countries of great wealth. It could be one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, 12. It could be numerous sites, or it could be one large site.”

During a Foreign Service career that spanned nearly four decades, Crocker served as U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, Kuwait, Syria, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. He noted that Trump’s proposal echoes a long-held position of the Israeli right wing that Jordan, which absorbed millions of Palestinians when they were displaced from the land that became the State of Israel in 1948, is already the “Palestinian state” sought by Palestinians.

After Palestinian militants relocated to Jordan following the Six-Day War, they sought to overthrow Jordan’s king in a 1970 war known as Black September. With that experience in their collective memory, Crocker said, Jordanians aren’t interested in accepting another massive wave of Palestinian refugees.

“What the president is proposing, that Jordan accept a massive number of Palestinians, would be effectively the eradication of Jordanian state, and that is only going to happen by force,” he said. “So if the president is seeking to prevent U.S. engagement in unwinnable wars, this is the exact opposite. It would be a cataclysm for the Middle East. It’s, frankly, unimaginable.”

Since the 2023 attack by Hamas and other armed groups, which killed roughly 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, Israel’s offensive has killed more than 47,500 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry. On Monday, authorities in Gaza said more than 14,000 other people remain missing and are presumed dead under the rubble.

Trump acknowledged the degree of destruction in Gaza, which he called “a demolition site” where “virtually every building is down.”

“The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative,” Trump said. “Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent, in a really magnificent area that nobody would know.”

While Palestinians may agree with the president’s damage assessment, many of them want to return to their homes because Gaza has long been considered an essential part of a future Palestinian state, along with the larger West Bank.

Israel has occupied the Palestinian territories since seizing Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan in the Six-Day War of 1967. While Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Israeli settlements have proliferated in the West Bank, making the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state in that territory increasingly unlikely.

Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Spokane Republican who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he has “always hoped for a two-state solution” and said he wants to learn more about Trump’s plan, which the congressman called “surprising and interesting.”

“I’d like to hear more about what the president’s plan is,” Baumgartner said on Wednesday. “Is this a general concept or are there agreements from folks in the region? Certainly, the status quo has not been great, for the region or for the Palestinian people.”

Sen. Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seemed to support Trump’s statements while subtly warning against a U.S. military presence in Gaza.

“The world is at an inflection point that requires new ways of thinking,” Risch said in a statement. “President Trump is willing to take risks many in the establishment haven’t even conceived of. I also know the president joins me in the belief that we cannot afford any more forever wars.”

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt sought to walk back Trump’s statements from the previous day, saying that the president “has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza,” but she didn’t explain how the United States would “take over” the territory without a military presence.

Baumgartner, who served with the State Department in Iraq with Crocker and later worked as a federal contractor in Afghanistan, said he hopes that the reconstruction effort in Gaza – whatever form it takes – will enable the services and quality of life for Palestinians that would prevent Hamas or a similar group from retaking power.

“There is no ability right now for a moderate, tolerant, responsive Palestinian government to step forward, because they’re so dominated by Hamas in Gaza,” he said.

Trump, a real estate scion whose family has investments in multiple Arab countries, has sought to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In a statement on Wednesday, the Saudi foreign ministry reiterated its position that it wouldn’t do that without the creation of a Palestinian state.

“The greatest tragedy of the Palestinian people is how they’ve been ignored and manipulated by their Arab neighbors,” Baumgartner said. “They’ve been a useful cudgel for other Middle Eastern states that haven’t necessarily wanted to be real solution-minded with them.”