WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Tuesday suggested that displaced Palestinians in Gaza be “permanently” resettled outside the war-torn territory.

Trump made the provocative comments at the start of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, where the two leaders also discussed the fragile ceasefire and hostage deal in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.

“I don’t think people should be going back,” Trump said. “You can’t live in Gaza right now. I think we need another location. I think it should be a location that’s going to make people happy.”

The president’s most strident argument to date for mass relocation from Gaza comes amid growing uncertainty that the temporary ceasefire and hostage agreement struck last month between Israel and Hamas can reach an even more delicate second stage.

Egypt, Jordan and other U.S. allies in the Mideast have cautioned Trump that relocating Gaza’s more than 2 million Palestinians would threaten Mideast stability, risk expanding the conflict and undermine a decades-long push by the U.S. and allies for a two-state solution.

Still, Trump insists the Palestinians “have no alternative” but to leave the “big pile of rubble” that is Gaza. He spoke out as his top aides stressed that a three-to-five-year timeline for reconstruction of the war-torn territory, as laid out in a temporary truce agreement, is not viable.

Last week, both Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Jordanian King Abdullah II dismissed Trump’s calls to resettle Gazans.

Still, Trump, with Netanyahu by his side, said he believes Egypt and Jordan–as well as other countries which he did not name–will ultimately agree to take in Palestinians.

“You look over the decades, it’s all death in Gaza,” Trump said. “This has been happening for years. It’s all death. If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people, permanently, in nice homes where they can be happy and not be shot and not be killed and not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza.”

The White House’s focus on the future of Gaza’s more than 2 million residents comes as the nascent truce between Israel and Hamas hangs in the balance.

Netanyahu is facing competing pressure from his right-wing coalition to end a temporary truce against Hamas militants in Gaza and from war-weary Israelis who want the remaining hostages home and for the 15-month conflict to end.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League joined Egypt and Jordan in rejecting plans to move Palestinians out of their territories in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Yet Trump may be betting he can persuade Egypt and Jordan to come around to accept displaced Palestinians because of the significant aid that the U.S. provides Cairo and Amman. Hard-line right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government have embraced the call to move displaced Palestinians out of Gaza.

“To me, it is unfair to explain to Palestinians that they might be back in five years,” Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, told reporters. “That’s just preposterous.”

Trump also signaled that he may be reconsidering an independent Palestinian state as part of a broader two-state solution to the decades-long Israel-Palestinian conflict. “Well, a lot of plans change with time,” he told reporters when asked if he was still committed to a plan like the one he laid out in 2020 that called for a Palestinian state.

“A lot of death has occurred since I left and now came back,” Trump said. “Now we are faced with a situation that’s different — in some ways better and in some ways worse. But we are faced with a very complex and difficult situation that we’ll solve.”

Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington for the first foreign leader visit of Trump’s second term comes as the prime minister’s popular support is lagging.