President Donald Trump was reportedly gifted two beepers — one regular and one golden — from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the leaders met in Washington, D.C. this week.
The gifts were reportedly “a nod to” Israel’s deadly September 2024 operation in which it exploded hundreds of pagers and other devices used by members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon and Syria, an Israeli official told the Associated Press.
Trump, per the official, reportedly responded to the present: “That was a major operation.”
Netanyahu received a photo of himself with Trump from the U.S. president.
Netanyahu’s visit generated headlines Tuesday when Trump, during a joint press conference, floated his plan for the U.S. to own, raze and then develop the Gaza Strip, which would mean the forced relocation of up to 2 million Palestinians.
It could become “the Riviera of the Middle East,” suggested Trump.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too,” the president said. “We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site, and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out, create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs.”
Netanyahu described Trump’s idea as “worth paying attention to.”
Trump “sees a different future for Gaza” and “it’s something that could change history,” he added.
But Arab countries immediately rejected the idea.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suggested Trump’s plan would amount to “a serious violation of international law.”
Critics in America argued it would be a flat-out contradiction of Trump’s bid to end U.S. interventionism, highlighting how Trump in his first weeks back in office has already talked about seizing control of the Panama Canal, buying Greenland from Denmark and somehow turning Canada into the 51st state.
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