The first official visit of a world leader to the White House since President Donald Trump's second term began has caused quite a stir.

The uproar was not because that world leader was Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for "crimes against humanity" over his military's operations in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas conflict.

It was Trump's statement about the US "taking over" the Palestinian enclave that was bound to court outrage and dominate the news cycle.

"I do see a long-term ownership position," Trump said on Tuesday while speaking alongside the Israeli leader at a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House. "Everyone I've spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning this piece of land, creating thousands of jobs."

Gaza was under Israeli occupation for more than half of the 20th century. Hamas, an Islamist militant group that Israel, the US, the EU and others designate a terrorist organization, has ruled Gaza since 2007 and has fought multiple wars with Israel in the enclave since.

The most recent conflict in Gaza was triggered by a Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, during which around 1,200 people were killed and 250 were taken hostage. The subsequent Israeli military campaign in the enclave resulted in 47,000 deaths, according to Gaza's Health Ministry, before a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect last month. 

On Tuesday, Trump professed a desire to transform the territory into the "Riviera of the Middle East" where "the world's people will live." However, Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy at the Middle East Institute, said this desire does not translate into policy.

"It's not terribly practical," Katulis told DW. "If it's rejected by most of the countries and people of the broader region, it's a road to nowhere. So it's a distraction and not likely to produce any meaningful outcomes."

Less pressure on Netanyahu

Talk of a US takeover of Gaza followed Trump's statements that Gazans "have no alternative" but to leave their territory. He also demanded that Egypt and Jordan resettle them, a view which Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Jordan's King Abdullah II solidly rejected.

For his part, Netanyahu appeared to nod in approval of the idea, saying that it was "worth paying attention" to and "something that could change history." Netanyahu's seeming openness to the notion of a US takeover of Gaza may reflect a relief of the pressure he faced from the Biden administration that he proposes a realistic day-after plan for Gaza.

"To this day, even though there's this ceasefire in place, there's no realistic plan for governance and who would rule it," said Katulis.

"I bet [Netanyahu is] pretty happy to hear Trump say he'd be willing to take on the burden, which is quite costly also because it releases Netanyahu in some way — if it were to be true, but no one thinks it's true."

Will the fragile ceasefire-hostage deal hold?

Netanyahu's visit comes amid difficult-to-ignore challenges to advancing peace in the Middle East, a feat Trump still very much wants to own. Those challenges start with the next steps for the Gaza ceasefire and continue with increased regional stability, including the broader aim of normalizing Israel-Saudi relations.

The US, along with Egypt and Qatar, helped broker the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which began last month. Part of the agreement includes Hamas releasing hostages it still holds in Gaza in exchange for Israel freeing Palestinian prisoners. So far, 18 hostages have been released in exchange for 183 Palestinian prisoners.

The ceasefire could lapse in March if Israel and Hamas do not negotiate a second phase where Hamas would release the remaining hostages, including the bodies of deceased hostages, to keep the ceasefire in place. But Hamas does not want to release more hostages in the second phase unless Israel stops the war and withdraws from Gaza, while Israel has expressed continued commitment to destroying Hamas. 

"The challenge is that the price that Hamas will demand for releasing Israeli soldiers is going to be very, very high," Jon Alterman, Middle East program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told DW. "And the price that Israel is going to be willing to give to Hamas, I think, is going to be strained in part because we could be entering a situation where live Palestinian prisoners are being exchanged for Israeli body bags."

As such, the negotiations are where the work will have to continue. After Netanyahu's nearly week-long visit to the US, Israel is sending a delegation to Qatar this weekend to have mediated discussions about the ceasefire agreement with Hamas. But Alterman says he is not entirely confident of the prospect of peace.

"I'm not sure anybody is done fighting in Gaza yet," he said. 

Israel-Saudi normalization — not any closer

While a successfully negotiated second phase is still not entirely within reach, the larger project of normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia seems even further away. 

Before the most recent war in Gaza, Israel was on the verge of improving ties with Saudi Arabia, as it had already with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates during Trump's first term. But the Israeli-Saudi normalization talks, which the US promoted, were halted after the October 7 Hamas attacks and the ensuing Israeli military offensive in Gaza.

The kingdom was quick to contradict Trump after he said on Tuesday that Saudi Arabia was not demanding Palestinian statehood as a condition for forging ties with Israel. And referring to Trump's resettlement demands, the Saudi government said it rejects attempts to displace the Palestinians from their land.

"Without a credible plan towards a two-state solution that includes Gaza for the Palestinians, none of those broader plans will go anywhere," said Katulis of the Middle East Institute. "The Saudis will not accept it if he sticks to this idea that somehow Gaza is not part of a two-state solution for Palestine."

Similar to Trump's desire to take over Gaza, wanting to be the man who achieves Israel-Saudi normalization won't happen just because he wants it to. 

"There's a strong belief that Trump would like to do it because he would see it as an achievement nobody else was ever able to do. I'm skeptical if the time is right or the necessary conditions can be met," said Alterman, the CSIS program director.

"The time you get the most on that is not a time when four to five Israeli Jews think that a two-state solution will undermine rather than contribute to Israeli security."

In many ways, the storm created around Trump's statements makes it difficult to see with complete clarity what outcomes the first visit by a foreign leader to this new administration has produced so far. Much is riding on how the Trump administration could push the parties toward peace after the US helped achieve the initial ceasefire deal.

Any bluster about a US takeover of Gaza only serves to undo any success on that front.

Edited by: Davis VanOpdorp