On Tuesday morning, I was at the United States Military Academy, in West Point, for a national-security conference. I was invited to observe several classes of cadets in a comparative-politics course. At the end of each class, their instructor, a young Special Forces major who had already seen a variety of conflicts during his short career, would give the students the chance to ask me questions about the “real world” Army. I find such interactions with cadets to be fun and engaging. After warming up, they always seem to get around to asking: What are the hot spots in the world, and where do you see us serving in support of our country during our career?

In answering, I give them my own history. Entering West Point in 1971, my class expected to serve in Vietnam. But by the time we’d graduated, five years later, America was out of that war. Most of us were instead sent to Europe, preparing for a clash between the Soviets and NATO that never arrived. After the Berlin Wall came down, we thought our nation would be at peace for years—but then the Army, which had trained for years to defend the border of Germany, found itself attacking Iraqi forces in Desert Storm. Then, after 9/11, we conducted counterterror and counterinsurgency fights in two distinctly different countries we’d never expected to go to.

The message for the cadets? As soldiers, prepare yourself for anything. Go where you’re sent, conduct operations to the best of your ability, serve your nation well, and follow your oath to defend the Constitution.

That night, in my hotel room, I watched the president stand next to the Israeli prime minister and suggest where the next generation of U.S. soldiers might go. Most Americans were surprised by Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would be “taking over Gaza”—that we would clear unexploded ordnance, “level the site,” deploy U.S. troops if necessary, and turn the area into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

After the press conference, I watched analysts, human-rights activists, and Middle Eastern officials condemn the proposed displacement of Palestinians, with some seeing in the proposal a violation of international law.

As stunned as I was by Trump’s announcement, my first thought was: If the military were told to deploy, how in the heck would it do this mission? As a commander, I had been assigned some tough missions. And I remembered reading that when General George C. Marshall made Dwight D. Eisenhower the commander of the European invasion force in World War II, he gave him the succinct written order to “enter the continent of Europe and defeat the Nazi war machine.” Eisenhower wrote that he was immediately overwhelmed by the scope and scale of that mission, the resources that it would require, and the operational environment—enemy, allies, terrain—the troops would face. But he started his planning, and eventually executed the D-Day landings. If the U.S. could pull that off, how much more difficult would it be for it to take over Gaza and turn it into the Riviera of the Middle East?

Answering that question requires translating Trump’s general directive into the specifics of implementation. First, consider the dimensions of the Gaza Strip. At approximately 141 square miles, it’s six times the size of Manhattan. Just razing half-destroyed structures, ridding the area of rubble, and erecting new buildings would present a daunting engineering challenge. One engineer I spoke with that night estimated that the cost would be $30 billion to $80 billion. That broadly aligns with the United Nations Development Program’s estimate of $30 billion to $40 billion.

The UN also estimates that the war has left more than 50 million tons of rubble in Gaza, and claims that clearing that debris could take more than 15 years. Given that more than 170,000 buildings have been damaged or destroyed during the Israeli military’s months-long operations, replacing them would require thousands of civil, structural, electrical, and environmental engineers coordinating their various disciplines, and could take decades.

Who would do this work? One cable pundit suggested using the United States Army Corps of Engineers. That organization has only about 35,000 civilian and 700 military personnel, and is already stretched thin by its domestic responsibilities. Deploying even a portion of the Army Corps would require a considerable commitment, and extensive support for the force within the area of its operation. Such an endeavor would likely necessitate extensive coordination with international partners and private organizations to manage the substantive building effort.

What the military calls the operational environment, or OE, is something that any commander or manager must assess before committing forces to an area. The Gaza/Israel OE is fraught with dangers that would affect and impede the already-challenging rubble-removal and construction efforts. The intelligence needed to counter the activity of terrorist groups comes from a variety of agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. All of these are undergoing personnel scrubs by DOGE, which is interrupting the flow of information that would help identify, prevent, and respond to threats. Dismissing senior counterterrorism leaders at the FBI, or encouraging large numbers of CIA officers to leave the agency, will weaken international intelligence sharing, risk increasing terror activity, and heighten international-security risks.

Almost-uniform international opposition would further complicate the challenge. Palestinian leaders were quick to denounce the demand that more than 2 million Gazans leave their home. Our European allies—on whom we depend for support in the area—met Trump’s comments with skepticism and criticism. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that forced displacement would be “tantamount to ethnic cleansing.” And the proposal also aroused domestic opposition, including from some of Trump’s closest political allies.

When Eisenhower was told to storm the European continent, he could count on the support of the American people, our allies, and our intelligence services—and could draw on enormous resources made available for the task. If the Gaza mission were to be handed to the military today, it would enjoy none of those advantages.

I purposely have not provided what the military calls a troop-to-task requirement, or an analysis of the number of soldiers that would be needed to accomplish the mission. And if troops did go to Gaza as part of this operation, as the president said might be needed, some of them would likely never return—just as thousands didn’t return from storming the beaches during World War II. Before the current administration goes any further, it should take stock of that reality.

President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to put America First, just proposed the wildest and most improbable intervention by the United States in overseas affairs since the invasion of and occupation of Iraq, more than 20 years ago.

At a joint press conference with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump promised that the U.S. would become the occupier of Gaza.

“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we’ll do a job with it too. We’ll own it,” Trump said. “I do see a long-term ownership position, and I see it bringing great stability to that part of the Middle East, and maybe the entire Middle East.” Trump suggested that U.S. troops would be used, if needed, to implement his vision for Gaza.

He presented this idea, one never before suggested by a U.S. president or Middle East peace negotiator, as a way to end generations of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and, also, as a bonus, an opportunity to create sweet real-estate development opportunities. The idea was breathtaking in its audacity, and it would be fair to say that its implementation would run into myriad obstacles at home and abroad, except that the overwhelming likelihood is that the U.S. would never come near implementing this notion.

Trump’s proposal to displace 2.2 million Palestinian residents from their homes, which he expanded on today, has already angered  the Arab world. A direct American intervention in Gaza would radically expand the U.S.  footprint in the Middle East, giving it possession of a territory devastated by 15 months of fighting between Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces, ignited by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. And it could further destabilize a region never known for its stability.

Trump, as is his practice,offered few details as he outlined the expansive idea at a White House press conference, standing next to a smiling Netanyahu.

The president—who has long been vociferously opposed to U.S. military intervention abroad—did not rule out sending the American military to secure Gaza while it was being rebuilt. Asked if U.S. troops would be deployed, Trump said that “we’ll do what’s necessary. … We’ll take it over and develop it.”

The plan would permanently remove Gaza’s residents from Palestinian territory and settle them outside of their land. Trump did not specify where homes for the new refugees might be found, though he again repeated his desire for Egypt and Jordan to take in Gaza’s residents. Both of those nations have firmly declined, their leaders quietly panicking, according to regional diplomats, at the thought of Trump forcing them to take radicalized Palestinians as refugees.

The displacement would presumably be met with outrage across the region. Palestinians, like Israelis, want to stay on their land. Neighboring Arab nations—even those with close U.S. ties—would not want to abet an Israeli expulsion of Palestinians from the strip. The Saudi foreign ministry released a statement offering its “unequivocal rejection” of any attempt “to displace the Palestinian people from their land.”

A ceasefire took hold in Gaza just before Trump took office, bringing a tentative halt to a conflict that has reportedly killed more than 20,000 Palestinian civilians and as many as 20,000 Hamas militants, leveled much of the strip, and created a devastating humanitarian crisis. Trump’s plan would pull the United States even more deeply into the conflict by taking over the territory, which has been fought over since Egypt occupied it in 1948.

The region has already been reshaped by Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks that killed nearly 1,200 people and saw another 250 taken hostage. Israel has pummeled Hamas, destroying its leadership, and also delivered devastating blows to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Combined with the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the events of the past year have left Iran more isolated than it has been in decades, and Trump today ordered the return of the “maximum pressure” campaign to sanction Tehran.

Trump’s Gaza plan, were it to be carried out, would appear to be a remarkable win for the far-right members in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, who have longed for permanent Israeli expansion into both Gaza and the West Bank. Netanyahu—a longtime Trump ally, and the first foreign leader to visit the White House in the president’s second term—suggested he was open to the idea, noting that Trump “sees a different future for that piece of land.” He added: “It’s worth paying attention to this. We’re talking about it. It’s something that could change history.”

One White House official told me that Trump’s comments were not a spur-of-the-moment suggestion but reflective of a newfound, post-election confidence that he could put together the ultimate deal and change decades of history.

“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked,” Trump told reporters. “I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land, and we get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable.” Trump has been buoyed by two first-term Middle East initiatives that Washington experts said would have devastating consequences for U.S. national security, but did not: The decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to the capital, Jerusalem, and the order to assassinate the Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani.

Trump—who also has been publicly and privately musing about winning a Nobel Peace Prize—has been known to first take an outlandish position and then move to a more moderate stance. Sometimes there is a method to his madness, and sometimes there is simply madness in his madness. World leaders, from Denmark to Panama to the Middle East, have spent the past two weeks trying to discern the difference.  

“It occurs to me that Trump may have floated this idea to raise the stakes after Arab countries refused his request to take in Palestinians,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, wrote on X. “Now, he’s cranking up the pressure: If you won’t take them, we’ll remove them ourselves and take control of Gaza. Classic Trump: Go to the extreme, making what once seemed outrageous suddenly look like the reasonable middle ground.”

Whatever motivated Trump’s comments, his proposal remains a repudiation of the principle of national self-determination, which has been a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy for more than a century, albeit one that has been imperfectly honored.

Any direct U.S. intervention in Gaza would fly in the face of Trump’s long-standing desire to disengage from foreign entanglements; he began negotiations to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, wants to slash aid to Ukraine and has threatened to abandon military positions in Korea, Europe, and Syria. And it may face pushback from at home from some usually reliable allies.

“I think that would be an interesting proposal,” Senator Lindsey Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill after Trump spoke. “We’ll see what our Arab friends say about that. I think most South Carolinians would probably not be excited about sending Americans to take over Gaza. It might be problematic.”

The plan also, ultimately, was at least a little bit about real estate. Trump remains a developer at heart, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner said last year that Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable” and that Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. The president today suggested that the appeal of Gaza’s beachfront property would be a draw for the strip’s future inhabitants, whether or not they be Palestinian, when asked whom he imagined living in the rebuilt region.

“I envision world people living there,” Trump declared. “The Riviera of the Middle East.”

US president pledges to turn enclave into 'the Riviera of the Middle East'.