Trump expresses disbelief Israel ever left Gaza

(JNS) — U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday said that he couldn’t understand why Israel ever gave up the Gaza Strip.

During a press conference in the Oval Office on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the president said, “They took oceanfront property and they gave it to people for peace. How did that work out? Not good.”

Netanyahu traveled from Hungary to Washington, D.C., on Sunday for an unplanned visit to resolve a tariff dispute.

Referring to Netanyahu, Trump said he knew that “this man” would never have done it. “He wouldn’t give it up. I know it very well. There’s no way.” 

Trump had high praise for the prime minister, saying, “I hope he’s being appreciated because he’s been a great leader.”

Israel unilaterally left the Gaza Strip in 2005 during a process known as the disengagement, forcibly evacuating some 8,000 Jews from 21 flourishing communities in the area. These communities, which included prosperous greenhouses, were turned over to the Gazans, who destroyed them.

Israel had handed over the area to the Palestinian Authority, which was ousted by Hamas in a bloody takeover in 2007. A year earlier, Hamas had won the Palestinian legislative elections in Gaza. 

Hamas, a Muslim Brotherhood group sworn to Israel’s destruction, turned the Gaza Strip into a terror base to launch attacks against the Jewish state. 

Hamas’s terrorist efforts culminated in the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel. 

The invasion took Israel’s military completely by surprise.

Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were murdered in the onslaught and 251 were taken hostage. Of those, 59 remain in captivity, 24 of whom are estimated to still be alive.