Top Trump administration voices on Wednesday contradicted some of the comments the president made a day earlier about the U.S. taking long-term control of war-shattered Gaza, the possibility of sending in American troops and the area’s residents being permanently resettled.

Although the president had been talking about the idea for weeks, there had been no meetings on the subject, and senior members of his government were taken by surprise.

President Donald Trump’s proposal to forcibly transfer hundreds of thousands of Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and develop faces some major obstacle