King Abdullah of Jordan is to meet Donald Trump in Washington on Tuesday in what is likely to be a tense encounter, the first Arab leader to do so as regional officials push back against the US president’s explosive plan to take over Gaza.
Trump has been piling pressure on Jordan and Egypt, both recipients of billions of dollars in US military assistance, to take in the entire 2.2mn population of Gaza and has threatened to “withhold aid” if they do not.
But the controversial and dangerous plan has outraged Arab officials, who say it risks destabilising the region, and puts western allies Jordan and Egypt on a collision course with the mercurial US president.
Badr Abdelatty, the Egyptian foreign minister, met US secretary of state Marco Rubio in Washington on Monday, where he reiterated the Egyptian position refusing the displacement of the Palestinians.
But Trump on the same day insisted again that King Abdullah, long seen as a voice of moderation in the region, would agree to “take refugees”. He has also doubled down on his extraordinary plan for the US to take over Gaza once the war between Israel and Hamas ends and the Palestinian territory has been emptied.
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Jordan receives $1.4bn a year in military aid from the US and Egypt gets $1.3bn. Analysts say that, despite the potential costs of defying Trump and risking his wrath, Arab leaders have little choice but to resist the plans. If they are seen to be complicit, it would provoke mass popular anger and shame them as sell-outs of the Palestinian cause.
Arabs consider any forced displacement of Palestinians as being akin to 1948, when hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes or fled in the fighting that accompanied Israel’s founding. Palestinians refer to that period as the Nakba, or catastrophe.
Amman and Cairo also fear it would increase the risks of conflict with Israel in the two countries that have peace treaties with the Jewish state, if militants among the displaced Palestinians launched attacks from within their borders.
Sisi has already said Egypt would not “participate in an injustice” against the Palestinians, and Cairo has called for an emergency Arab summit on February 27. Abdullah has also expressed “rejection of any attempts to annex land and displace the Palestinians”, according to the Jordanian royal court.
Trump has also raised tensions by suggesting that Israel could tear up the ceasefire agreement with Hamas that has brought fighting to a halt, and that “all hell will break out” if the Palestinian militants do not release all Israeli hostages by Saturday at noon.
Jordan would refuse the “ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians” even if the cost was “the economic relationship with the US and the financial assistance”, said Ibrahim Saif, a former minister and head of the Jordan Strategy Forum, a think-tank.
An influx of Gazans would also upset the “delicate” population balance within the country, which is already home to millions of Palestinian refugees and citizens of Palestinian origin, he said.
Trump, who is considered the most pro-Israeli president in American history, announced his plan to take over Gaza last week while hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since the US election.
His outlandish comments while sat next to a smiling Netanyahu reinforced Arab fears that Trump would do Israel’s bidding while riding roughshod over the Palestinians.
Jordanian concerns extend beyond Gaza as its leaders worry that Trump could approve any Israeli plan to annex the occupied West Bank and push Palestinians into the kingdom, a scenario Amman has long feared.
Michael Wahid Hanna, director of the US programme at the International Crisis Group, said that for Egypt and Jordan, transferring the Gazans “was a red line”.
“They would be effectively aiding and abetting the death of the Palestinian national movement,” he said. “Islamists and all regime opponents” in Egypt and elsewhere in the region “would make hay” with it.
Cartography by Aditi Bhandari
