
By Vivian Yee and Alissa J. Rubin
Finding themselves in the fickle cross hairs of President Donald Trump, Jordan and Egypt are moving with speed — and uncertain prospects of success — to dissuade, distract and divert him from forcing them to take in Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
For the two Arab governments, who view Trump’s proposal that they take in 2 million Palestinians as an existential threat, the strategy appears to be to placate the U.S. president with offers to work together to rebuild Gaza, bring peace to the region and expand humanitarian aid efforts. That could help them buy time, analysts say — perhaps enough for Trump to discard the idea as too complicated, or to recognize the strategic and security drawbacks of destabilizing two of the closest allies of the United States in the region.
Jordan’s King Abdullah employed a conciliatory tone in his meeting with Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, telling the U.S. president that his country would take in 2,000 Palestinian children with cancer and other illnesses from Gaza. Still, he otherwise gave no ground on the question of resettling more residents of Gaza, and later repeated Jordan’s rejection of the plan in a statement on social media.
Jordan has been treating some cancer patients from Gaza for months already, making the offer more of a token than a real concession. But Trump called it a “beautiful gesture.”
Other world leaders have found that flattering Trump tends to help them get their way. King Abdullah seemed to be following their example Tuesday, heaping praise on the president as “somebody that can take us across the finish line to bring stability, peace and prosperity” to the Middle East.
Even as the king pushed back against Trump in the post to make clear he was rejecting the mass displacement of Palestinians, he noted that the United States had a key role to play. “Achieving just peace on the basis of the two-state solution is the way to ensure regional stability,” he said in the post. “This requires U.S. leadership.”
Egypt, too, said it wanted to work with Trump to “achieve a comprehensive and just peace in the region by reaching a just settlement of the Palestinian cause,” according to an Egyptian statement released later Tuesday.
But the statement made no mention of participating in Trump’s proposal, and reiterated Egypt’s position that peace could be achieved only by giving the Palestinians statehood. Palestinians and many other Arabs have rejected Trump’s proposed forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza not only as ethnic cleansing, a war crime that flies in the face of international law, but also as the death knell for their long-held dream of a Palestinian state.
Egypt sought instead to serve up an alternative plan for Trump, saying in the statement that it would “present a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in a manner that ensures the Palestinian people remain in their homeland.” The Palestinian Authority joined in on Wednesday with its own plan for helping Gaza recover from the war.
In recent days, as alarm over the president’s idea has mounted in Cairo, Egyptian officials have emphasized that Egypt stands ready to help rebuild Gaza, with which it shares a vital border crossing, as it did after previous conflicts there.
An Egyptian real estate tycoon, Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who like Trump has developed a chain of residential properties and hotels, went on an evening news show on Sunday to outline a $20 billion proposal for building 200,000 housing units in Gaza, as if trying to talk to Trump developer to developer.
But Moustafa, who is closely linked to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, said he envisioned reconstructing Gaza without moving any Palestinians out of the strip.
During the Tuesday meeting, King Abdullah also alluded several times to the need for consultations with Egypt and other Arab countries before responding to Trump’s proposal, mentioning an upcoming meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Egypt has also called for a summit of Arab leaders to discuss the issue in Cairo on Feb. 27.
Despite the pushback from Egypt and Jordan, Trump seems to be sticking to the core of his out-of-left-field proposal for the United States to “own” Gaza and redevelop it into a “Riviera” for tourism and jobs. During the Tuesday meeting with King Abdullah and his son, Crown Prince Hussein, he said that “we will have Gaza” and “we’re going to take it.”
But he appeared to soften his previous threat to cut funding to Jordan and Egypt, two of the top recipients of U.S. aid, if they did not accept Gaza’s Palestinians, saying, “We’re above that.”
Middle East experts say Trump appears to be ignoring previous U.S. calculations about the importance of stability in Egypt and Jordan, Arab neighbors of Israel who both made peace with Israel years ago and cooperate closely with the United States on security matters.
“The way that he talks about these relationships, it is as if these countries are takers, and that we get very little out of them,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who focuses on Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians.
In fact, many human rights advocates and critics of Egypt have questioned how wise the U.S. investment in Egypt is, arguing that it props up a repressive regime that often goes against U.S. interests. But analysts say the cooperation of Egypt and especially Jordan on regional security has been valuable to the United States.
Egypt and Jordan both accepted Palestinian refugees after they were displaced during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of the state of Israel, and Egypt has now taken in at least 100,000 Palestinian medical evacuees and other people who fled Gaza.
But analysts say both countries would rather risk losing U.S. aid than alienating their populations by appearing complicit in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
For Jordan, taking in large numbers of Palestinians forced out of Gaza is unacceptable because it could widen an existing rift between citizens who are of Palestinian descent and those who are not, destabilizing the monarchy, analysts say. More than half of King Abdullah’s 12 million subjects are of Palestinian descent.
Jordan already hosts about 700,000 refugees, including Syrians and Iraqis as well as Palestinians. That largely impoverished population has all but overwhelmed the small country’s limited resources.
Trump’s proposal also inflames fears that Israel will next drive Palestinians out of the occupied West Bank into Jordan, a long-held ambition of far-right Israelis.
The secretary-general of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, alluded to such fears Wednesday, saying, “Today the focus is on Gaza and tomorrow it will shift to the West Bank, with the objective of emptying historic Palestine of its indigenous people, something that is unacceptable.”
Egypt also sees the possibility of Palestinians resettling in Egypt as a serious security threat. Forcibly displaced Palestinians could launch attacks on Israel from Egyptian soil, officials say, inviting Israeli military retaliation.
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