The Times of Israel reports: “US President Donald Trump on Tuesday declared his desire for the United States to ‘take over’ and ‘own’ the Gaza Strip, again stunning a global audience hours after doing so with his call for permanently relocating the coastal enclave’s entire population.

‘The US will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it,’ Trump said in prepared remarks at the start of a joint press conference with visiting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after the two leaders met in the Oval Office.

There had been speculation that Trump would use his Tuesday meeting with Netanyahu to urge him to commit to carrying out the second phase of the ongoing Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal. The prime minister is under pressure from his far-right coalition partners to resume fighting at the conclusion of the first phase next month.

But Trump avoided publicly leaning on Netanyahu at all, instead praising his leadership and seemingly offering him a political lifeline by getting fully behind an idea — emptying Gaza — that has long been endorsed by the Israeli far right, and thereby giving ultranationalist lawmakers an incentive to keep the government intact…”