Ambassador David Friedman: Make U.S.-Controlled Gaza A ‘Monument To The Failure Of Radical Islamism’

In an exclusive interview with Morning Wire, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman discussed President Trump’s plan to have the United States take control of Gaza, saying it could become a “permanent monument to the failure of radical Islamism” if executed correctly.

“Why not now take this extraordinarily valuable property in the hands of decent people, make it what it could be,” Friedman told Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. “Let’s create a permanent monument to the failure of radical Islamism. Because that’s what this will become.”

During a Tuesday press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced his plans to relocate all Gazans out of the area and to rebuild the strip into a U.S.-owned-development zone.

Friedman said the effort could be funded by the new American Sovereign Wealth Fund, a government-owned investment portfolio that will be used to purchase assets and invest for future generations.

“He’s looking at the incredible violence and waste and human misery and then he’s looking at what this could be,” Friedman said. “When I was working on this, we always had one gaping issue when it came to Gaza, which is, how are we going to get Hamas out?”

Friedman pointed out that Hamas has a lot of support and was democratically elected in 2006, though the terror group has not held elections since. But despite this, Friedman believes that many Gazans would willingly relocate for the chance at a better life.

“From my direct conversations with lots of people who come from Gaza, many people would love to leave,” Friedman said, adding that although some people will say they rather fight to the media, “there aren’t a lot of people who really feel that way.”

He added that he knew of many Gazans who wanted to leave before Hamas’ war with Israel began after October 7.

“I got a pretty good sense from people living in Gaza how desperate they were to get out,” he said. “It’s a terrible place to live. It’s under the most repressive radical Islamic regime, Sharia law regime that people want to get out and there’s a lot of educated people in Gaza because, oddly enough, there’s so little to do there. There’s actually a lot of people reading books. And so it’s not completely an uneducated place, and they want to get out and they want to move on with their lives.”

He estimated that more than 90 percent of “non-Hamas terrorist sympathizers” would want to leave.

“I would say we’re talking about probably a million and a half people at least who would gladly get on a boat and go someplace else,” Friedman said.

But Friedman says even Gazans who want to stay have to go.

“Whatever the legal issues may be, whatever the moral issues may be, they can’t stay,” He said. “There’s no place for them to stay. There’s not a building there which wouldn’t be condemned by any zoning board in the United States. They’re all going to fall down.”

The key is getting people to recognize that it’s simply not practical to stay, according to Friedman.

“I just think that once you reach the conclusion that the people who live there now have to leave for their own safety, for their own health, they have to leave. Then it opens up a much wider focus on what could be.”

Friedman said the United States should continue to pressure Jordan and Egypt to take in Gazan refugees, pointing out that Jordan receives massive amounts of financial support from the United States.

A good solution, according to Friedman, would be relocating the Gazans to Egypt’s large and rural Sinai peninsula, which Israel returned to Egypt in 1979.

“Sinai has basically been neglected by Egypt since Israel handed it back, so I think there’s opportunities there,” Friedman said.

Alternatively, Friedman said the over 20 Muslim countries could consider taking in 20,000 to 30,000 Gazan refugees each.

Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other key players have rejected Trump’s idea.

Hamas, the terrorist organization that raped, murdered, and kidnapped more than a thousand people in Israel on October 7, called Trump’s plan a “crime against humanity.”

Listen to the entire interview here.