As President Trump pushes a new plan to take control of Gaza and clear out an area that once was home to an estimated two million residents, he is advocating bringing the United States much more deeply into a region where his family has a growing collection of real-estate and business interests.
There is no part of the world as crucial to the growth of various Trump family business ventures as the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Israel, when the full portfolio of Mr. Trump as well as Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, are included. Here is a look at the family’s interests in the region and Mr. Trump’s proposal for Gaza.
What Trump proposed for Gaza
Mr. Trump declared on Tuesday that the United States should seize control of Gaza and permanently displace the entire Palestinian population of the devastated seaside enclave.
Mr. Trump suggested the resettlement of Palestinians would be akin to the New York real estate projects he built his career on. “If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places with plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” he said. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza.”
“Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land,” Mr. Trump added, “developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent.”
Mr. Trump’s aides on Wednesday walked back some of his comments, with the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, saying that “the president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza.”
Real estate in Oman, Saudi Arabia and Dubai
The Middle East has in the past three years turned into the hottest spot for the Trump family in terms of new international real-estate deals. Most of these are so-called branding deals, which collectively earn the family tens of millions of dollars in fees in exchange for the right to use the name to help boost luxury condo, golf or hotel sales.
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.
“We are delighted to strengthen our ongoing relationship with the Trump Organization,” Ziad El Chaar, an executive with Dar Al Arkan’s subsidiary said last year, in announcing one of the deals.
The project in Oman, which is the farthest along, involves the government of Oman itself, as it owns the land where the Trump golf course and hotel are being built.
Although the opening of the resort destination is still at least three years off, the Trump Organization has already raked in at least $7.5 million from the Oman deal, financial reports from the past two years show. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. visited Oman this summer to check the project’s progress, visiting the site with Yousef Al Shelash, the chairman of Dar Al Arkan.
Dar Al Arkan itself has close ties with the Saudi royal family; the government there has been an important partner for the real estate company’s owners as they have built up their business.
The Trump family also examined a potential deal in Israel before the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and remains interested in doing a project there, The Times previously reported. Mr. Trump’s son Eric Trump has said he intends to wait until the war ends before moving ahead.
Even before this recent burst of new Middle East deals, the Trump family already had an outpost in the region. Trump International Golf Club, Dubai, opened in 2017, shortly after Mr. Trump started his first term in the White House.
The partner in this Dubai club is DAMAC Properties, run by Hussain Sajwani, a billionaire real-estate executive who, Mr. Trump boasted in December, plans to invest billions of dollars in the United States to build data centers.
A partnership with LIV Golf
The Trump family also has been a key partner to LIV Golf, the upstart professional golf league financed by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. In April, for the fourth year in a row, the league is slated to hold one of its tournaments at the Trump National Doral near Miami.
LIV Golf pays the Trump family to host the tournament, which also drives thousands of customers to its restaurants and hotel rooms during the weekend event, scheduled for April of this year. Mr. Trump and his family own more than a dozen golf courses worldwide, all of which benefit from the media attention that the Saudi-backed tournament brings.
Mr. Trump has long sought to attract these kinds of tournaments to his golf courses, but had at least one major event canceled after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Jared Kushner’s investments
The president’s son-in-law, Mr. Kushner, runs a private equity firm called Affinity Partners that has raised $4.5 billion, mostly from sovereign wealth funds of the oil-rich nations of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, based on relationships he built as an adviser to Mr. Trump during his first term.
Mr. Kushner, who has said he does not plan to return to the White House, also has invested in at least two Israel-based businesses: Phoenix Holdings, an insurance company, and the car leasing division of Shlomo Holdings.
Mr. Kushner’s business partner at Shlomo Holdings is also a partial owner of Israel’s only domestic builder of warships. That puts him in business with executives who are also major shareholders in an Israeli military contractor whose vessels have been used in the war in Gaza, armed with American-made weapons.
It was Mr. Kushner who last year first floated the idea of considering Gaza as a potential real-estate development site. “Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable,” Mr. Kushner said last year during an event sponsored by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, suggesting that Israel “move the people out and then clean it up.”
