President Donald Trump's call for the United States to take "ownership" of the Gaza Strip combines "common sense, sanity, and a deep sense of realism," Shahar Azan, a former spokesperson for the Israeli consulate in New York City, told Newsmax Wednesday.
"At the end of the day… all of the older attempts, the usual ones, the customary ones, the orthodox ones have been tried time and time and time again," Azan said on "National Report." "Maybe it's time to apply a different kind of thinking to a complex problem that the Gaza Strip represents."
Trump on Tuesday suggested that displaced Palestinians in the war-torn territory be "permanently" resettled elsewhere while the U.S. takes "ownership" and redevelops the area.
Azan said the Gaza Strip now only has Hamas, "a barbaric, vile organization that perpetrated the October 7 massacre" in Israel, and a population that has been "deeply radicalized by Hamas for decades, creating a community of people that cheered, celebrated, and sometimes actively participated in the massacre."
Trump's plans, Azan added, allow "something different" to be done with the Gaza Strip and will keep what's happened there in recent decades to repeat itself.
"This requires that the region, the states of the region, the United States, but also other countries across the world to roll up their sleeves to radically change the reality on the ground," Azan said.
He noted that when Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 it was praying that the Palestinians would take advantage and "build the Singapore of the Middle East."
Instead, Hamas has been using international aid money to build "dungeons and tunnels of terror and cages for innocent people," Azan said. "That is unacceptable. That reality has to stop."
And with Trump, "[t]here is a new sheriff in town who means business, which gives us all a ray of hope in the region that we will get up and wake up for a brighter tomorrow," he said.
But countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are rejecting calls to resettle Palestinians in their territory, and Azan said that shows a "gap" in their support.
"When they're required to actually help Palestinians, suddenly they are not interested in accepting a radicalized, dangerous population that has wreaked havoc on the Gaza Strip within their territory," he said.
But he pointed out that Gaza, after several months of war, is "in rubbles."
"Hamas has brought a catastrophe over Gaza's head with the October 7 massacre so there has to be a creative solution which will allow for friendly neighboring countries or other countries to take those Palestinians in and provide shelter for them and support them, while efforts are being made to rebuild and reimagine Gaza," Azan said.
The Gaza plan would also allow for an opportunity to expand the Abraham Accords, "and maybe change the face of the region and indeed the world."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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