Senior Trump administration officials have walked back several elements of the president’s proposal to “take over” Gaza and expel the Palestinian population, insisting that he did not commit to using U.S. forces to clear the area and that any transfer of Palestinians would be temporary.

Trump's outrageous proposal to transfer up to 2 million Palestinians from Gaza and seize and redevelop it as American territory drew immediate opposition Wednesday from key U.S. allies and partners around the world, many of whom have expressed support for a Palestinian state. Experts have called the idea a violation of international law and a war crime.

Less than 24 hours after Mr. Trump rolled out the plan, senior administration officials sought to water it down, with Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Caroline Levitt, saying that while the president had made a “historic proposal for the United States to take control of Gaza,” he had “not committed” to sending American troops “yet.”

“It has been made very clear to the president that the United States needs to be involved in this rebuilding effort,” Levitt said Wednesday. “That does not mean putting boots on the ground in Gaza. It does not mean that American taxpayers will fund this effort.”

Levitt also added that Trump wants to see Palestinians living in Gaza "temporarily resettled" in order to rebuild the Strip.

The spokeswoman confirmed that Trump said that "the United States will not fund the reconstruction of Gaza. His administration "will work with our partners in the region to rebuild this area."

For his part, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday that President Trump wants the Palestinians to temporarily leave Gaza until the Strip is reconstructed.

Rubio told reporters during a visit to Guatemala that Trump's offer, which sparked worldwide condemnation, "was not hostile, it was, I think, a very generous move, an offer to rebuild and oversee the reconstruction."

He added that Trump offered "a willingness to intervene, to remove the rubble and clean the place of all the destruction on the ground, to clean it of all the unexploded ordnance."

"In the meantime, the residents will not be able to live there while teams enter and remove the debris," he added.

He stressed that Trump wants to support "rebuilding homes and businesses and the like, so that people can return to live there."

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, all of whom are indebted to the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, have also enthusiastically supported Trump's proposal to expel Palestinians to places outside Palestine, insisting that the United States must do everything it can to ensure that there is no security threat to Israel from anyone.

It is noteworthy that when Trump announced his proposal for the United States to take ownership of Gaza on Tuesday, it shocked even senior members of the White House and government.

While his announcement seemed formal and thoughtful — he read the plan off a sheet of paper — his administration did not do even the basic planning to examine the feasibility of the idea, according to four people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly, according to The New York Times.

As President Trump pushes a new plan to take control of Gaza and evacuate the territory, home to about two million people, he is pushing the United States deeper into a region where his family has a growing array of real estate and business interests.

No part of the world is more important to the growth of the Trump family’s various business ventures than the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, when you include President Trump’s entire investment portfolio and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Here’s a look at the family’s interests in the region and Mr. Trump’s Gaza proposal.

Trump declared on Tuesday that the United States should take control of Gaza and permanently remove the entire Palestinian population from the devastated coastal strip.

Trump suggested that resettling the Palestinians would be more like the New York real estate projects on which he built his career. “If we could find the right piece of land, or several pieces of land, and build some really beautiful places with a lot of money in the area, that would be a sure thing,” he said. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza.”

The Middle East has become the Trump family’s most lucrative place for new international real estate deals in the past three years. Most of these are so-called branding deals, which collectively earn the Trump family tens of millions of dollars in fees for the right to use the name to help boost sales of luxury condos, golf courses or hotels.

Recent agreements have been signed with a Saudi-based real estate company called Dar Al Arkan to build high-rise luxury apartments, golf courses or hotels in Oman, Saudi Arabia and Dubai.