Trump to chair 'large meeting' on post-war Gaza: US envoy

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will host a meeting on Wednesday on post-war plans for Gaza, his envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday.

“We’ve got a large meeting in the White House tomorrow, chaired by the president, and it’s a very comprehensive plan we’re putting together on the next day,” Witkoff said in a Fox News interview, without providing more details.

He was asked if there was “a plan for a day after in Gaza,” referencing the end of Israel’s war in the Palestinian territory that began in October 2023.

Trump stunned the world earlier this year when he suggested the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip, clear out its two million inhabitants and build seaside real estate.

Trump said the United States would remove rubble and unexploded bombs and turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised the proposal, which was heavily criticized by many European and Arab states.

Witkoff did not elaborate on the plan he touted Tuesday, but said he believed that people would “see how robust it is and how it’s, how well meaning, it is.”

The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

Israel’s offensive on Gaza has killed at least 62,819 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.