High Trump government officials try to retreat in the Gaza Strip Plan
High Trump government officials directly contradicted the president on Wednesday after he proposed that the United States “take” the Gaza Strip and expelled the Palestinian population, insisting that he had not committed to using US troops and that Any relocation of Palestinians would be temporary.
At a surprising press conference on Tuesday (4) alongside Israeli Prime Minister, Trump said the United States should take control of Gaza and permanently move the entire Palestinian population of the devastated enclave by the sea.
Asked if he would send American troops, Trump said: “We will do whatever is needed. And if necessary, we will do that. Let’s take on that piece. ”
Read more: Analysis: With Gaza Plan, a Trump “Without Stretch” presents an unlikely idea
On Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said something different to reporters.
“The president did not commit to put troops in Gaza,” Leavitt said. She did not specify how the United States could take control of Gaza without military strength, although she said that Trump would meet with other leaders in the region to discuss the next steps.
She also said that any Palestinian displacement would be temporary. Trump had said he saw the United States by assuming “a long -term property position” in Gaza and that Gaza would become a place “not to a specific group of people, but to everyone.”
Leavitt said: “The president made it clear that they need to be temporarily relocated out of Gaza to reconstruct this effort. Again, it’s a demolition place now. It is not a habitable place for any human being. And I think it’s really bad to suggest that people should live in such terrible conditions. ”
Trump often makes comments that go beyond what his advisers would like him to say, and sometimes they try to back down. But the only statements that really matter are Trump’s.
Almost at the same time as Leavitt’s Briefing, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, also tried to retreat in some of Trump’s comments. He suggested that Trump was just proposing to clean and rebuild Gaza, not claim undefined possession of her.
“The only thing President Trump has done – very generously, in my opinion – is to offer the willingness of the United States to intervene, clean the wreckage, clean the place of all destruction,” including unnataged ammunition “so that people then people They can come back, ”said Rubio.
And, Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East, said Republican senators at a closed -door lunch that Trump “doesn’t want to put American troops on the ground, and he doesn’t want to spend any US dollar” in Gaza, Said Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri.
A republican senator asked Witkoff if Trump’s comments on Tuesday night were made in the heat of the moment, and Witkoff replied that the government was “gestating this plan for some time,” Hawley added.
Leavitt also said there was no written plan on Trump’s idea of taking Gaza before Tuesday night.
“The plan was written in the president’s observations last night, when he revealed him to the world,” she said.
