First United States President Donald Trump mused on his January 20 inauguration day about the Gaza Strip being a “phenomenal location”, where “beautiful things could be done”. Then came an almost off-the-cuff suggestion on January 26 where he told reporters on Air Force One that Palestinians should be moved to Egypt and Jordan to “just clean out” the enclave.

The question of whether this was a serious suggestion, and whether any displacement of Palestinians would be temporary or permanent was unclear, as Trump continued to make occasional comments on the topic.

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But then, on Tuesday, appearing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House – in the first official visit by a foreign leader since the new president’s inauguration – Trump dropped a bombshell, declaring that the US would “take over” and “own” Gaza, hoping that Palestinians there would “go to other countries” in what would essentially amount to ethnic cleansing.

On Wednesday, his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that Trump had not committed to US troops on the ground in Gaza, and that the people living there would be “temporarily relocated”, while providing few other details about a plan that has been widely rejected by Palestinians, Arab states – including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – and many countries internationally.

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Here’s all you need to know about Trump’s proposal and if he’s serious or if his plan is even possible.

Why did Trump make his Gaza announcement? And what does he actually want?

Determining Trump’s true intentions are often difficult. The man who released a book called The Art of the Deal prides himself on his negotiating acumen, and it can be hard to differentiate between what is his starting position and what the end goal is – or even if an end goal currently exists.

“Trying to psychoanalyse Donald Trump is an exercise in futility,” Jasmine el-Gamal, a Middle East policy analyst, told Al Jazeera. “Nobody knows what’s in Trump’s head.”

She continued, “It’s hard to imagine him believing [the US] can go in, push out people, and as Trump said, invite the ‘world’s people’ to live there. It’s absolutely fantasy … It’s important in the meantime to continue to not normalise these kinds of ideas, but to take stock of actual reality on the ground of Arab positions.”

The announcement could be an attempt to make Israel’s far right – who have called for the illegal Israeli settlement of Gaza – happy after their anger at his support for a ceasefire to end Israel’s war on the enclave.

It could also be interpreted as an attempt to strongarm Arab states into funding the reconstruction of Gaza – Trump’s National Security Adviser Mike Waltz framed the plan as potentially one of many. “[Trump’s announcement] is going to bring the entire region to come up with their own solutions,” Waltz said.

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How feasible is the idea of the US taking over Gaza?

Trump’s comments shocked even his most ardent supporters – el-Gamal cited Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham as one example. Graham doubted support, even from Trump’s Make America Great Again base, for US troops on the ground in Gaza, a point made by several other Republicans.

And then there is the reality of 2 million Palestinians who would be evicted from their land – with the vast majority having no desire to go, as seen by the immediate return to the north of Gaza by hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who had been displaced to the south of the territory during the war.

There would no doubt be armed resistance to any efforts to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza, and despite Israel pummelling Gaza over 15 months of fighting – killing more than 61,000 Palestinians – its army has been unable to crush Palestinian resistance forces.

In fact, despite inflicting losses on Hamas, the group has reportedly recruited as many fighters as it lost and repaired much of its infrastructure.

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, US policy fellow at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, said that there were numerous reasons why the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza would not play out the way Trump says, and would scupper the president’s chances of achieving goals, such as normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“The US ‘taking over’ Gaza would not only further hinder chances of US interests in the region being fulfilled, but it would also fly up against the very heart of America First principles,” Kenney-Shawa said.

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Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a strident US isolationist who is popular among Trump’s base, made that point in a social media post on Wednesday, saying, “I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers blood”.

Sami Hamdi, a journalist, adviser and political consultant, said that it was difficult to imagine Trump’s supporters backing the presence of US troops in Gaza. “It may well be instead that Trump pushes for a compromise whereby regional powers that are warm to Israel form a regional ‘peacekeeping’ force to contain Gaza,” he told Al Jazeera.

What is the position of the US’s Arab allies?

El-Gamal pointed out that US partners in the region quickly rejected Trump’s proposal outright.

“Saudi Arabia was so intent on broadcasting the same message that it released a statement at 4:30am their time. They didn’t wait until business hours to say it’s a non-starter,” el-Gamal said. “This cannot happen without the approval and participation of Arab states so the question becomes what is the alternative to this plan?”

King Abdullah of Jordan is scheduled to visit the White House next week. Press secretary Leavitt has indicated that the monarch may change his mind and accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza, just as other world leaders have backed down in confrontations with Trump since he reassumed the presidency.

Is the foreign takeover of Gaza a new idea?

Israeli politicians have long had a fantasy of taking Gaza.

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Israel previously built illegal settlements in Gaza before former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon moved them out in 2005. Israel has since rapidly expanded illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

Sharon justified the Gaza disengagement by arguing that Jewish Israelis would never constitute a majority in Gaza. Israel, however, did continue to control access to Gaza and airspace over it, enforcing a siege from 2007 that led to the enclave being compared to an “open-air prison”.

At the start of the war on Gaza, a leaked document from Israel’s Ministry of Intelligence proposed the movement of Palestinians from the territory into Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

Netanyahu played down the idea in public – ethnic cleansing is against international law – but his supporters, including ministers in government, have continued to push the idea. And following Trump’s announcement, Israelis from across the political spectrum welcomed the idea.

“This idea is so nonsensical, but it is what the Israelis have been pushing for quite some time,” said Diana Buttu, a former adviser with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and expert on Israel-Palestine.

“It’s not unique to Trump,” she told Al Jazeera.

How does Trump benefit?

In March 2024, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner suggested that Israel should remove the Palestinian population from Gaza and clean out the Strip, saying that “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable”.

He added that the population could be taken to Egypt or to the Naqab (Negev) desert in southern Israel – Israel supports the former and refuses to consider the latter.

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Kushner is a real-estate tycoon who was tasked during Trump’s first presidential term with managing the Israel-Palestine peace process, which has been effectively defunct for about two decades, analysts say.

During his recent address, Trump echoed some of Kushner’s sentiments.

“[We’ll] make it into an international, unbelievable place. I think the potential for the Gaza Strip is unbelievable,” he said.

“And I think the entire world, representatives from all over the world, will be there and they’ll live there,” he added.

Buttu believes that Trump is disregarding the wellbeing of the Palestinians, their history or culture.

“Who are you to decide that we want a Middle East Riviera which totally discounts our history?” she argued.

“[The majority] of Gaza’s population is not even from the Gaza Strip and they just want to go back to their homes [in what is today Israel]. Why isn’t that a more practical option?”

Is Trump’s plan part of Netanyahu’s goal to eradicate Hamas?

True, the “eradication” of Hamas is often cited as a goal and a reason for the destruction being meted on Gaza, but observers say Israel’s real motivations are different.

“It’s a pretext on the part of the Israelis to be sure. They’ve always insisted loudly on this sort of ‘divine claim’ to Gaza. That goes back way before October 2023,” the political consultant Hamdi said.

“In that regard, the Israelis welcome Trump’s announcement [about expelling all the people in Gaza]. However, Trump also imposed a ceasefire, which is not what a lot of Israelis wanted at all. My instinct is Trump is not inclined to support the continuation of a war and wants to find a way to empty Gaza without one.”

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Hamdi also doubted that Hamas could be totally eradicated.

“Many people still support Hamas. We saw that after the ceasefire. The idea of ‘resistance’ is older than Hamas, and Hamas is simply a more recent manifestation of it as Palestinians try to stop Israel’s relentless push to oust them from their homes,” he said.

“That’s what many people in Washington are asking themselves now. If they go in there [as Trump has said] the resistance might fire upon them. Is the US – and the US public – ready for another Vietnam?”