Powerful Arab nations rejected President Trump’s suggestion to relocate Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring Egypt and Jordan.
Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League released a joint statement rejecting any plans to move Palestinians out of their territories in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
Mr. Trump told reporters last month that he would urge the leaders of Jordan and Egypt to take in Gaza’s now largely homeless population and 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 last 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.'”
“It’s literally a demolition site right now,” Trump said, referring to the vast destruction caused by Israel’s 15-month war with Hamas, now paused by a fragile ceasefire.
Mr. Trump said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during a conversation last week. He said he would “like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Earlier this week, Egypt, Hamas, and Jordan as well as several European countries rejected Mr. Trump’s suggestion.
Saturday’s Arab statement followed a meeting in Cairo of top diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as Hussein al-Sheikh, a senior Palestinian official who serves as the main liaison with Israel, and Arab League chief Ahmed Aboul-Gheit.
Khaled Elfiqi / AP
The Arab statement warned that such plans “threaten the region’s stability, risk expanding the conflict, and undermine prospects for peace and coexistence among its peoples.”
The Arab diplomats said they were looking forward to working with the Trump administration to “achieve a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East, based on the two-state solution,” according to the statement.
They called for the international community to help “plan and implement” a comprehensive reconstruction plan for Gaza to ensure that Palestinians stay on their land.
Egypt and Jordan, along with the Palestinians, worry that Israel would never allow them to return to Gaza once they have left. Egypt and Jordan also fear the impact any such influx of refugees would have on their struggling economies as well as the stability of their governments.
Jordan already is home to more than 2 million Palestinians. Egypt has warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.
Both countries were the first to make peace with Israel but they 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.