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By Gabe Whisnant
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In a Monday morning radio interview, Donald Trump raved about the weather in the Gaza Strip and said the war-torn area could be "better than Monaco" as a tourist destination.
On the show, host Hugh Hewitt, a conservative commentator, asked the former president, "Could Gaza be Monaco if it was rebuilt the right way? Could someone make Gaza into something that all the Palestinian people would be proud of, would want to live in, would benefit them?"
In response, Trump said the 140-mile Gaza Strip, which is on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, is "the best location in the Middle East."
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"It could be better than Monaco. The best water, the best everything. It's got, it is the best, I've said it for years. You know, I've been there, and it's rough. It's a rough place, before the, you know, before all of the attacks and before the back-and-forth, what's happened over the last couple of years," he said.
Exactly 12 months ago, Hamas-led militants launched a deadly surprise attack, breaching Israel's security fence and targeting nearby military bases and farming communities. The October 7 assault resulted in the deaths of approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the abduction of 250 others. The militants are still holding around 100 captives inside Hamas-controlled Gaza. Israel has been at war with Hamas since the group, designated a terror organization by the U.S., invaded southern Israel that day.
Israeli ground operations and intensive airstrikes have devastated the Palestinian territory, leading to international humanitarian concerns for its roughly 2 million inhabitants. Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza say more than 41,000 people have been killed since Israel vowed to eradicate the militant group after October 7.
Speaking about Gaza, Trump also told Hewitt: "You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place—the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East, but it could be one of the best places in the world."
Newsweek emailed the Trump campaign Monday afternoon for additional comments.
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In Gaza, the summers are long, warm, muggy and arid. The winters are cool and mostly clear, according to Weatherspark.com, which has reports on the typical weather for worldwide locations. Over the course of the year, the temperature typically varies from 50 to 86 degrees and is rarely below 45 or above 89.
Trump's remarks to Hewitt resemble recent comments by Jared Kushner, his former White House adviser and his son-in-law.
In an interview dated February 15 and posted in March on the YouTube channel of the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Kushner praised the "very valuable" potential of Gaza's "waterfront property." He suggested then that Israel should remove civilians while it "cleans up" the area.
"Gaza's waterfront property, it could be very valuable if people would focus on building up livelihoods," Kushner said. "If you think about all the money that's gone into this tunnel network and into all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?
"It's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up," he added. "But I don't think that Israel has stated that they don't want the people to move back there afterwards."
Kushner also suggested that Israel should relocate civilians from Gaza to the Negev Desert in southern Israel. He said if he were in charge of Israel, his top priority would be evacuating civilians from the southern city of Rafah. He added that "with diplomacy" it might be feasible to move them into Egypt.
"But in addition to that, I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there," he said. "I think that's a better option, so you can go in and finish the job."
After media reports about the interview, Kushner reacted on X (formerly Twitter) to "those dishonestly using selected parts" of his remarks. He posted a video of the entire interview, saying he stood by his comments and believes "the Palestinian people's lives will improve ONLY when the international community and their citizenry start demanding accountability from their leadership."
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