Trump: Gaza could be better than Monaco if it wasn’t such a rough neighbourhood

Former president said Palestinians never took advantage of strip ‘as a developer’

Donald Trump has claimed that Gaza could be “better than Monaco” if the war-torn region was not such a “rough neighbourhood”.
The former president, speaking on the anniversary of the Oct 7 massacre, suggested that Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip had not done enough to take advantage of their location on the eastern Mediterranean.
“It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything,” Trump told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host, on Monday.
“The best water, the best everything. It is the best, I’ve said it for years.
“You know, I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place… before all of the attacks and before the back-and-forth, what’s happened over the last couple of years.”
On Oct 7 last year, Hamas fighters breached the border wall from Gaza into Israel, where they killed some 1,200 civilians – including 46 Americans – and took hundreds of others hostage.
Israel launched a military response into Gaza days later, in a conflict that has taken the lives of more than 40,000 people, according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry.
The Palestinians “never took advantage of it [Gaza] as a developer”, said Trump, who came to national fame as a New York real estate tycoon.
“It could be the most beautiful place, the weather, the water, the whole thing, that climate,” he continued.
“It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East, but it could be one of the best places in the world.”
He added: “That’s been a rough neighborhood. That’s been a rough place.”
Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law, said in February that Gaza’s “waterfront property” could be “very valuable if people would focus on building up livelihoods”.
He suggested that Hamas, a proscribed terrorist group in the US, should have focused on “education or innovation” instead of building an underground tunnel network to store weapons and shelter from Israeli strikes.
Earlier on Monday, Trump visited Ohel Chabad-Lubavitch – a sacred site amongst Hasidic Jews – in New York, where he prayed for the release of hostages taken by Hamas on Oct 7.