Netanyahu joins Trump in saying US troops not required for Gaza

Israeli leader says simply ‘no’, when asked if he supported American posting to enclave

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. AFP

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US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu separately said on Thursday that American troops would not be needed in Gaza, which was mentioned as a potential part of the US leader's much-criticised plan to redevelop the Palestinian enclave.

Mr Trump said Israel would hand over the Gaza Strip to the US after the fighting ends. By then, Palestinian residents would have already been resettled elsewhere in “far safer and more beautiful communities with new and modern homes in the region”.

“No soldiers by the US would be needed! Stability for the region would reign!” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. On Tuesday, he had said he would send US troops if it was necessary.

Mr Netanyahu, who is in Washington this week, visited the US Capitol on Thursday, where he, too, said US troops are not needed in Gaza.

Gathering with bipartisan members of the US Senate ahead of a meeting with Republican majority leader John Thune, Mr Netanyahu simply answered, “no”, when asked if he supported a US posting to the strip.

Mr Trump proposed at a Tuesday press conference with Mr Netanyahu that the US should take “long-term ownership” of Gaza. He also said he wanted to see the Gaza Strip redeveloped into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. The comments have drawn widespread condemnation in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Despite the apparent walk-back of comments regarding US troops being posted to Gaza, a US military contractor, UG Solutions, last week told Reuters that it is hiring nearly 100 special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in the enclave during the initial phases of the Israel-Gaza ceasefire.

Mr Netanyahu was on Capitol Hill meeting with a new Republican majority that has promised to ramp-up Washington's support of Israel. Mr Thune delivered a message to Israelis after clinching party leadership in the Senate chamber: “Reinforcements are on the way.”

Among the senators posing for a photo-op with Mr Netanyahu was Republican Tom Cotton, who is leading legislation aimed at eliminating all official US references to the “West Bank” and refer to the occupied Palestinian territory as “Judea and Samaria” instead.

The Israeli Prime Minister was also due to meet Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

Senate foreign relations committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen said she had a “frank and productive” conversation with Mr Netanyahu.

“I also stressed to Prime Minister Netanyahu the importance to Israel’s long-term security of maintaining stability in the West Bank and the need to work with our partners in the region towards a negotiated two-state outcome with a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in equal measures of peace, security and mutual recognition,” Ms Shaheen said.

Mr Trump's Gaza comments prompted an immediate response from some members of his own Republican Party, who expressed confusion at the off-the-cuff reversal of US policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Alaska Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said she does not “even want to speculate to that question, because I think that is quite frightening”, she said.

Democratic senator Chris van Hollen, among the few senators to vocally condemn Israel's Gaza war and who has pledged to oppose all of Mr Trump's State Department nominations over the recent shuttering of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), called the plan “ethnic cleansing by any other name”.