In laying out his contentious proposal last month for the US to take over the Gaza Strip, US President Donald Trump said he wanted to “clean out that whole thing” and “resettle people permanently” in other countries.

Trump and his aides have since periodically softened some of the plan’s terms, but they have avoided explicitly stating that Palestinians who want to remain in the Strip will be able to do so.

In that regard, the US approach appears further-reaching than a similar one that former national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir had been championing even before October 7 — “encouraging the voluntary migration of Gazans.”

Ben Gvir has been careful to stress that his initiative was not compulsory, amid criticism that such calls would amount to ethnic cleansing.

The head of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party also refrained from suggesting that his proposal was aimed at relocating Gaza’s entire population of roughly two million, as Trump did when describing his “Mideast Riviera” plan.

But in a Wednesday interview with The Times of Israel, Ben Gvir insisted that he and Trump are on the same page.

“I don’t think there’s any difference between what I’m saying and what you’re saying,” Ben Gvir said while sitting behind a desk at his parliamentary office in Jerusalem.

The Otzma Yehudit chairman blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for holding up the implementation of the effort, explaining his party’s decision to withdraw from the government after more than two years.

“I’m with Trump. I wish the prime minister of Israel would be with Trump,” Ben Gvir lamented. Netanyahu has embraced the president’s proposal to take over Gaza, but the ex-cabinet minister argued that his former boss was not implementing it.

While Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the establishment of a new directorate in his office tasked with enabling Palestinians to “voluntarily” leave the Gaza Strip, Ben Gvir dismissed the effort as unserious because Israel is not “encouraging” Gazans to emigrate.

The seven-seat Otzma Yehudit party quit the coalition on January 19 after Netanyahu agreed to a hostage release and ceasefire deal with Hamas, which the former national security minister argued actually neutralizes his effort to encourage Palestinians to leave by allowing the Gaza-ruling terror group to sufficiently regroup and, in turn, continue intimidating Palestinians from fleeing.

“If Israel is not in control of Gaza, Hamas will not let anyone out or even make a peep,” he said, calling for the IDF to immediately resume the war against Hamas, while blocking all humanitarian aid from entering the Strip.

Such a hardline approach would bring an end to the ongoing hostage deal before it progresses to a second phase, during which some two dozen more hostages believed to be alive are slated to be released.

But Ben Gvir said that if Israel gains control of Strip, more Gazans would be able to leave.

“I think that if you give the Gazans a choice, they will prefer to leave Gaza. I assume that a large part will leave. It could start with 100,000, then 200,000, followed by another 400,000 and another 300,000,” he speculated.

While no country has publicly volunteered to take in Palestinians to date, Ben Gvir argued that “it’ll be good for them” when a new location is found, framing it as a humanitarian gesture the way Washington has.

“A better life is not necessarily tied to the physical space that you are in today,” Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff said earlier this month. “A better life is about better opportunity, better financial conditions, better aspirations for you and your family. That doesn’t occur because you get to pitch a tent in the Gaza Strip and you’re surrounded by 30,000 munitions that could go off at any moment.”

Asked whether he was concerned that Witkoff’s argument could be turned against Israelis, many of whom feel similarly attached to all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, Ben Gvir dismissed the notion.

“That’s another story. In Israel’s case, it’s [our] land… This land never belonged to Arabs,” the ultra-nationalist lawmaker maintained.

Ben Gvir’s resignation came just one day before Trump’s inauguration, which meant the pair had not overlapped as government officials.

“I do feel like there’s a bit of a missed opportunity that we’re not together — me, as a minister and him as the president of the United States,” said the Otzma Yehudit chair.

“I have a feeling that Trump would really like me if we got the chance to talk,” he continued. “Because I say things as they are, just like he does… People like this in the United States, and they like it in Israel too.”

Ben Gvir asserted earlier this month that he’d be willing to return to the government if Netanyahu implements Trump’s relocation proposal.

“If Israel right now transferred hundreds of thousands of Gazans as part of an operation to encourage emigration, I have no doubt that it would change the picture,” he added Wednesday.

Ben Gvir’s tenure as national security minister coincided with that of former US president Joe Biden, whose administration boycotted the minister, deeming engagement to be a legitimization of his views.

The former cabinet minister in charge of police confirmed for the first time that the Biden administration withheld assault rifles from being transferred to his ministry for several months during the war.

Ben Gvir said he was trying to arm local security teams throughout the country, but Washington was reportedly concerned the weapons would be used to arm settlers and were being inappropriately distributed at political events.

The former minister said he ended up bypassing Washington by turning to Israeli manufacturers. “In the end I managed… [and] the United States lost out a bit because we bought these weapons elsewhere.”

He revealed that he also faced pressure from the Biden administration — albeit indirectly — to ease the conditions of security prisoners in the jails his ministry oversees.

“Israel’s prisons today look more like the prisons in the United States. They [used to be] one big summer camp,” Ben Gvir claimed, adding that he ignored US objections on the matter.

Some of the security prisoners released in the ongoing ceasefire deal have appeared emaciated and alleged widespread abuse by Israeli guards.

There were also attempts by the Biden administration to roll back the changes Ben Gvir made to more openly allow Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount in violation of the status quo that governs the flashpoint site.

Biden officials “wanted to reach the police district commander… but I said I wouldn’t allow him to meet them without me. I’m the one in charge of the policy at the Temple Mount. Not the district commander and not anyone else,” Ben Gvir said.

Asked if Netanyahu had leaned on him to heed the previous administration’s calls, the former minister shook his head no.