When pressed on Trump’s proposal that Palestinians be resettled in Egypt and Jordan, the White House official told the Washington Examiner that the president’s priority is ensuring the return of Hamas-held hostages and that the terrorist organization “cannot continue to govern and is out of power.”

“Beyond that, I think the administration will be looking toward building on the end of the Gaza war, ultimately to promote regional normalization, but that’s as far as I’m able to go in terms of how we’re seeing the peace process,” a senior administration official said Tuesday morning.

“On the relocation, I think President Trump looks at the Gaza Strip and sees it as a demolition site, sees it as impractical for it to be rebuilt within three to five years, believes it will take at least 10 to 15, and thinks it’s inhumane to force people to live in an uninhabitable plot of land with unexploded ordnance and rubble,” the official added.

Trump was also “looking for solutions for helping the people of Gaza have normal lives while the Gaza Strip is ultimately being rebuilt and is trying to look at this in a realistic way,” the official said.

A second administration official added that Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, last week became the first U.S. official in 15 years to travel to Gaza. Witkoff told Axios at the time that reconstruction of Gaza is “a 10- to 15-year rebuilding plan.”

“You’ll need things like a geotechnical survey,” she said. “There’s no utility, there’s disease, there’s standing water. You couldn’t get an ambulance through there if you wanted to right now. So, it really is quite uninhabitable.”

That official additionally underscored a meeting this week between the United States and its Arab partners in which the U.S. implored them to “come together for creative solutions to this challenge.”

“This is not going to be something that the United States is going to solve alone and that we’re going to impose on Arab and Israel, but rather, we’re asking our friends, and partners, and allies to come together as we look for what solutions we can provide that would be humane and would provide dignity for the Palestinian people,” she said.

White House officials sidestepped questions about whether Trump would pressure Netanyahu to enter the second phase of the ceasefire deal.

The first phase, poised to end on Feb. 18, includes the release of 33 Israeli hostages and more Palestinian prisoners, in addition to Israel withdrawing from most of Gaza and an increase in humanitarian aid.

The second stage is supposed to include the release of younger Israeli male hostages and Israel agreeing to end the war. The third phrase would mark the end of the war, with bodies being exchanged, Israel withdrawing from Gaza entirely, and the reconstruction of the enclave starting.

“We’ve had a year and a half of policies toward Israel that, I think, only prolonged this war and made it something that went on much longer than it should have been,” the second official said. “That will be corrected right away and is being corrected by this meeting, where you see the very first head of state coming here to the White House, of course, is the prime minister of Israel. And of course, the first phone call that President Trump made was to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia,” Mohammed bin Salman.

Trump will sit down with Netanyahu on Tuesday afternoon before the two leaders participate in an expanded bilateral meeting, press conference, and dinner.

The two men have a relationship strengthened by decisions Trump made during his first administration, including recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the U.S. Embassy there in 2018. The president, too, acknowledged Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and negotiated the Abraham Accords.