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Although the president had been talking about the idea for weeks, there had been no meetings on the subject, and senior members of his government were taken by surprise.
By Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman
When President Trump announced on Tuesday his proposal for the United States to depend on Gaza, he even surprised the members of his own White House and the Government.
While his announcement looked formal and thought-out — he read the plan from a sheet of paper — his administration had not done even the most basic planning to examine the feasibility of the idea, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions, who were not authorized to speak publicly.
It wasn’t only the Americans who were scrambling; the announcement came as just as much of a surprise to Mr. Trump’s Israeli visitors. Soon before they walked out for their joint news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Trump surprised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel by telling him he planned to announce the Gaza ownership idea, according to two people briefed on their interactions.
Within the United States government, there were no meetings with the State Department or the Pentagon, as it would take place for a serious foreign policy proposal, much less one of this magnitude. There had been no career groups. The Ministry of Defense had not produced any estimate of the number of troops required, or collect estimates, or even a definition of how it could work.
There is not much more than a concept in the president’s boss.
Unlike major foreign policy announcements with past presidents, including Mr. Trump, the notion of the United States controlling Gaza had never been part of a public discussion before Tuesday.
But in private, Trump had been talking about the American property of the enclave over the weeks. And his thought had accelerated, according to two management officials, after his envoy from Middle East, Steve Witkoff, returned from Gaza last week and described the horrible there.
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