WASHINGTON: The White House said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump had not committed any funds for his proposal for the US to take over Gaza or deploy troops there for that purpose.
Senior officials of the Trump administration also sought to make clear President Trump was not talking about indefinitely occupying Gaza as he seemed to have suggested in a news conference on Tuesday alongside visiting Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The President has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza, " White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the daily briefing.
"He has also said that the United States is not going to pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. His administration is going to work with our partners in the region to reconstruct this region."
Leavitt went on to describe the proposal as an "out-of-box idea" characteristic of the President whose goal was to bring "lasting peace" in West Asia.
Asked if Leavitt was rolling back Trump's willingness to send American troops to Gaza to implement his plan, she said, "I am saying that the President has not committed to that just yet. He has not made that commitment."
Addressing a news conference with Netanyahu, Trump had proposed the plan saying, "The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We'll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site. Level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area."
Trump argued in his proposal that Gaza is currently unlivable and that it is a "demolition site" because of the Israeli military action since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas and that they should be sheltered temporarily in neighbouring countries such as Egypt and Jordan while Gaza is rebuilt like, he said, a "riviera of the Middle East (West Asia, as the region is called by India)".
According to US media reports the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Guatemala that Trump was only proposing to clear out and rebuild Gaza and not claim indefinite possession of the territory.
And Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to West Asia, told Republican Senators in a closed-door interaction that Trump "doesn't want to put any US troops on the ground, and he doesn't want to spend any US dollars at all" on Gaza, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri told The New York Times.