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US President Donald Trump's call on Egypt and Jordan to take people from Gaza to “clean out the whole thing” has led to behind-the-scenes diplomacy to formulate a unified Arab stance to reject the suggestions, sources told The National on Monday.
To lend their position additional weight will probably call for an emergency meeting of the Cairo-based Arab League, and possibly a summit, in the hope that it would place sufficient pressure on Mr Trump to walk back on his Gaza proposals or allow the subject to be forgotten.
Mr Trump, who returned to office for a second term on January 20, said over the weekend that he wanted Jordan and Egypt, which are bound by peace treaties with Israel, to take people from Gaza, devastated by a 15-month war with Israel. He said the enclave had become a “demolition site”. "Over the centuries it's had many, many conflicts, that site," he added. "And I don't know, something has to happen.”
Gaza's inhabitants could be moved “temporarily or could be long term”, he said.
His comments were met with opposition from across the Arab world as well as Hamas and its rival Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank. The Arab League has also rejected the suggestion.
“Persuading [Trump] to change his mind is very difficult,” said a source. “But if we show him pan-Arab unity in opposing what he has suggested, he might just slowly drop the idea of emptying Gaza of its inhabitants.”
Most of Gaza's residents have been displaced, often several times, by Israel's war, which was sparked by Hamas's deadly attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than twice that number injured since the war began, according to Gaza's health ministry. A 42-day truce brokered by the US, Qatar and Egypt came into force this month.
For Gazans and other Palestinians in the West Bank, and those in the diaspora, any attempt to evict Palestinians from Gaza would evoke the memory of the Nakba, the displacement of about 700,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel 75 years ago.
The sources said the continuing diplomatic discussions among Arab governments in response to Mr Trump's comments have Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar at their centre.
Saudi Arabia wields significant leverage in Washington because of Mr Trump's desire to see the kingdom establish relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords he initiated during his first term in office, said the sources.
Egypt, meanwhile, has been a close ally of the US for almost 50 years, and has received tens of billions of dollars in economic and military aid since the late 1970s. It receives $1.3 billion annually in military aid, which has enabled the Arab nation to modernise its armed forces.
Significantly, Mr Trump exempted Egypt and Israel from the suspension of all of Washington's foreign aid programmes, pending a review, a move that underlines the strategic relations the two Middle Eastern neighbours have with the US.
Underlining possible tension between the US and Egypt in the wake of Mr Trump's comments, there has been no official word from Cairo or Washington on plans by the US leader to discuss them in a call with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi that was supposed to take place on Sunday.
On Saturday, a statement from Egypt's Foreign Ministry rejected the idea of “emptying” Gaza or the West Bank of their inhabitants but made no mention of Mr Trump's proposals.
The reactions are no different in Jordan.
The refugee flow into Jordan, which started when Israel was created in 1948, has raised the proportion of people of Palestinian origin in the country.
Jordan's politics and society have remained, over decades, intertwined with Palestine. Like Egypt, it has repeatedly warned against forcing Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza, arguing that it would undermine the Palestinian cause and end hopes of a two-state solution, recognised internationally as the only realistic resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Jordan will not become an “alternative homeland” for Palestinians, which would help Israel solidify its occupation, King Abdullah II has said repeatedly.
Mr Trump said he spoke by phone to the monarch on Saturday and reportedly told him: “I’d love for you to take on more [Palestinian refugees], because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess. It’s a real mess. I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
On Sunday, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said in televised remarks that Mr Trump “has been clear in saying that he wants peace in the region, and in this we will be his partners. Jordan works according to fundamentals that everyone knows: the solution to the Palestinian problem lies in Palestine. Jordan is for Jordanians. Palestine is for Palestinians.”
Jordan is the world's third-largest recipient of US aid. In 2022, the US committed $10.1 billion in aid to Jordan to be disbursed over seven years, a surge of 16 per cent on an annualised basis.
Hazem Ayyad, a veteran Jordanian researcher specialising in Palestine, said that although Jordan and Egypt are pillars of a Middle East “Pax Americana”, the two were unlikely to bend to Mr Trump's will on Gaza, mostly because of domestic political dynamics.
“It runs counter to the march of Jordan’s history, and to its geography,” Mr Ayyad said. Jordan must always honour its “political and religious legacy”, which is based on defending the basic rights of Palestinians, even if that means clashing with Washington, he said. “Jordan’s stability rests on this legacy,” he added.
