Doral, Florida — President Trump’s push to have Egypt and Jordan take in large numbers of Palestinian refugees from besieged Gaza fell flat with those countries’ governments and left a key congressional ally in Washington perplexed on Sunday.
Fighting that broke out in the territory after ruling Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 is paused due to a fragile ceasefire, but most of Gaza’s population has been left homeless by the Israeli military campaign. Mr. Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One that moving some 1.5 million people away from Gaza might mean that “we just clean out that whole thing.”
Mr. Trump relayed what he told Jordan’s King Abdullah when the two held a call earlier Saturday: “I said to him, ‘I’d love for you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess.'”
He said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during a conversation they were having while Trump was at his Doral resort in Florida on Sunday. Mr. Trump said he would “like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Hamas, Egypt and Jordan reject Trump’s Gaza suggestion
Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians were allowed by Israeli forces on Monday to start returning to their towns and villages in the decimated northern half of Gaza, sparking a mass migration seen as a powerful repudiation of the concept of any mass-deportation from Gaza.
OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP/Getty
In a statement posted online Monday, spokesman Abdul Latif al-Qanou of the U.S.- and Israeli-designated terrorist group Hamas, which has ruled over Gaza for almost two decades, said the scenes of people returning in vast numbers to the north “represent another failure of the occupation in achieving the goals of the war of extermination and destruction, and a message of defiance to any new attempt to displace them.”
“The steadfastness of our people on their land and their return from the south of the Gaza Strip to its north represents the end of the Zionist dream of displacing them and liquidating their just cause,” said al-Qanou.
Egypt and Jordan, along with the Palestinians, worry that Israel would never allow the Palestinians to return to Gaza if they are made to leave. Both Egypt and Jordan also have perpetually struggling economies and their governments, as well as those of other Arab states, fear massive destabilization of their own countries and the region from any such influx of refugees.
Jordan already is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees. Egypt has warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.
AP
Mr. Trump suggested that resettling most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million could be temporary or long term.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that his country’s opposition to what Trump floated was “firm and unwavering.”
Some Israel officials had raised the idea early in the war.
Egypt’s foreign minister issued a statement saying that the temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians “risks expanding the conflict in the region.”
In the statement, the ministry reaffirmed “Egypt’s commitment to the principles and parameters of a political solution to the Palestinian issue, stressing that it remains the central issue in the Middle East. The delay in resolving it, ending the occupation, and restoring the stolen rights of the Palestinian people is the root cause of instability in the region.
“In this context, Egypt reiterates its continued support for the steadfastness of the Palestinian people on their land and their adherence to their legitimate rights in their land and homeland, as well as to the principles of international law and international humanitarian law. It also emphasizes its rejection of any infringement upon those inalienable rights, whether through settlement activities, annexation of land, or the eviction of the rightful owners through displacement or encouraging the transfer or uprooting of Palestinians from their land, whether temporarily or permanently.”
Mr. Trump does have some leverage over Jordan, which is a debt-strapped, but strategically important U.S. ally and is heavily dependent on foreign aid. The U.S. is historically the single-largest provider of that aid, including more than $1.6 billion through the State Department in 2023. Much of that comes as support for Jordan’s security forces and direct budget support.
Jordan in return has been a vital regional partner to the U.S. in trying to help keep the region stable. Jordan hosts some 3,000 U.S. troops. Yet, on Friday, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio exempted security assistance to Israel and Egypt, but not to Jordan when he laid out the details of a freeze on foreign assistance that Mr. Trump ordered on his first day in office.
European officials react to Trump’s suggestion
Germany’s government also rejected the idea of a mass-displacement of Palestinians on Monday, with a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry telling reporters in Berlin that the country shared the view of “the European Union, our Arab partners, the United Nations… that the Palestinian population must not be expelled from Gaza and Gaza must not be permanently occupied or recolonized by Israel.”
In Italy, right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration and has sought to position herself as an interlocutor between the new U.S. administration and Europe, tried to downplay the president’s Gaza suggestion.
“Trump is right when he says that the reconstruction of Gaza is obviously one of the main challenges we face, and that to succeed, however, a great deal of involvement from the international community is needed,” she told reporters during a visit to Saudi Arabia. “As for the issue of refugees, I don’t think, here again, that we are faced with a defined plan [from Mr. Trump]. I think we are rather faced with discussions with regional actors, who certainly need to be involved in this.”
ga”These are certainly very complex matters, but the fact that they are being discussed, even at an informal level with the actors in the region, in my opinion means that we want to work seriously on the issue of the reconstruction of Gaza,” the Italian leader said.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” says Sen. Lindsey Graham
Meanwhile, in the U.S., even some Republicans loyal to Mr. Trump were left trying to make sense of his words.
“I really don’t know,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” about what the president meant by the “clean out” remark. Graham, who is close to Mr. Trump, said the suggestion was not feasible.
“The idea that all the Palestinians are going to leave and go somewhere else, I don’t see that to be overly practical,” said Graham, a veteran GOP senator from South Carolina. He said Mr. Trump should keep talking to Mideast leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and officials in the United Arab Emirates.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about. But go talk to MBS, go talk to UAE, go talk to Egypt,” Graham said. “What is their plan for the Palestinians? Do they want them all to leave?”
Trump drops hold on 2,000-pound bomb shipment to Israel
Mr. Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, also announced Saturday that he had directed the U.S. to release a supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Former President Joe Biden had imposed a hold on the specific weapons due to concerns about their effects on Gaza’s civilian population.
Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population could make that so-called “two-state solution” impossible.
Mr. Trump is also seen in the Middle East as being less supportive of an eventual two-state solution than previous U.S. administrations, and Israel’s current government has all but ruled out the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
In making his case for such a massive population shift, Mr. Trump said Gaza is “literally a demolition site right now.”
“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location,” he said of people displaced in Gaza. “Where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”