First things first. President Donald Trump is neither going to "take over" Gaza nor are we "going to own it." Any objective person with a reasonable degree of intelligence who's watched Trump over the years knows he often loves to get people's attention with over-the-top comments and claims. Second, far more Palestinians have been killed by Hamas and other Islamist terrorist groups than by everyone else combined.

Now, as Paul Harvey was fond of saying, the rest of the story...

In reaction to Trump's Tuesday proposal,  NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel melodramatically went off the rails — in glorious fashion —on Wednesday's episode of "Today." 

Ever-smug host Savannah Guthrie kicked off the ridiculous festivities. Above the on-screen headline, "INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY REACTION TO TRUMP GAZA PLAN," Guthrie opened the segment thusly:

Lots to chew on here. Let’s get to NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. He, of course, has covered this region for — for decades. Lived there as well. Richard, let’s start with the — the reaction that’s coming in. We’ve already heard from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. How are world leaders, particularly in the Middle East, reacting?

Engel eagerly responded (emphasis, mine):

So, I’ve been speaking, Savannah, since this announcement came from President Trump with powerful leaders in the region, members of royal families and their — the universal reaction was shock and horror. People don’t believe this is feasible. They’re not sure if Trump is serious, but they believe that this should not happen, that it would be destabilizing, that it would be the — tantamount to ethnic cleansing in the region because many Palestinians don’t want to go. 

Hold the bus.

In addition to what I wrote in the opening paragraph, Islamists have attempted ethnic cleansing of Israel and the Jewish people for decades. And let's assume, for the sake of Engel's claim, that many Palestinians "don't want to go." Many Palestinians also don't want to be killed by Hamas or because of the terrorist group's actions, either. And they certainly don't want to continue burying their children. 

Engel continued:

The neighboring countries, Egypt and Jordan, don’t want to take them in. So, that would mean, in theory, if this were to go ahead, the U.S. military going in there and removing people with — with a barrel of a gun and putting them on some sort of busses and trains and sending them into a countries where they don’t want to go and countries where they’re not welcome. There’s a very simplistic argument that could be made that sure, it makes a lot of sense. You’ve got an area that’s been destroyed. 

Why Richard, that wasn't a not-so-veiled comparison to Hitler's Nazi putting Jews on trains and shipping them to concentration camps, was it? Of course it was.

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Engel's ridiculous spew continued:

You have two million people living there without basic services, so why wouldn’t they want to go someplace elsewhere they could have a better life and create an opportunity to rebuild the — the territory? But the question is President Trump talks about making this a Riviera — a riviera in the Middle East for whom? For Palestinians or for Israelis? Palestinians certainly believe if there is going to be any kind of construction there under Trump’s perspective. it would be for the Israelis and that the Palestinians would be displaced and never be allowed to return to their homes or their homeland.

Exactly. (The first highlighted portion.) Second, in my not-so-humble opinion, neither Trump nor anyone else is going to turn Gaza into the "Riviera of the Middle East" — at least not anytime soon. The third highlighted portion is pure speculation — from a hopelessly biased position.

Finally, Engel's prediction (that if Trump were somehow able to carry through on his Gaza "plan") was likely closer to true than not.

The U.S. would be entering into a gorilla war because some Palestinians could be incentivized no doubt that — when they go back to their homes. And that is happening right now, Palestinians are moving from the southern parts of the Gaza Strip to the north. They’re finding very little left. They’re seeing tremendous amounts of damage, so some Palestinians probably could be encouraged to leave, but many others would not. 

Hamas has already said it won’t leave. Other factions would certainly emerge, so you’d have American troops occupying potentially for a long term one of the most problematic places in the entire Middle East and for administration and for a President who said that he wants to get out of foreign wars, this would certainly be a very potentially violent entanglement.

There's a stubborn old truism that continues to hang around —for a reason: the law of unintended consequences. 

The law of unintended consequences is a frequently observed phenomenon in which any action has results that are not part of the actor's purpose. The consequences may or may not be foreseeable or even immediately observable, and they may be beneficial, harmful, or neutral in their impact. 

In this case, it's reasonable to have concerns that the unintended consequences of the "plan" wouldn't be in the best interests of the United States — or those of the Middle East.