President Trump said on Monday that he could reduce the help in Jordan and Egypt if he refused his request to permanently take the Palestinians from Gaza, substantially increasing pressure on key allies in the area to support his bold proposal the relocation of the population of the territory for its reconstruction.
The President also told the White House that if Hamas did not release all other Israeli hostages by “12 on Saturday”, the ceasefire agreement with Israel should be canceled.
“All hell is going to break out,” Mr Trump told reporters at the Oval Office, while recognizing that the choice to end the ceasefire eventually fell to Israel.
Jordan and Egypt, and the two great recipients of US military and financial assistance, rejected any proposal that the Palestinians would be transferred to their countries. But Mr Trump said on Monday that help could be in danger.
“If they do not agree, I would probably like to withhold help,” he told reporters in response to a question the day before a meeting with King Abdullah B of Jordan.
Mr Trump expanded to the idea of ​​forced displacement of about two million Palestinians, a move that some scholars said would be equivalent to a war crime and ethnic cleansing. In an interview with Fox News Broadcast on Monday, Mr Trump said he did not envision the Palestinians who left Gaza to make the way for the reconstruction plan ever returned.
Asked in the interview if the Palestinians will eventually “have the right to return” to Gaza after the completion of the proposed construction projects, the president said: “No, it will not”.
As for where they could go, he said, “I think I could make a deal with Jordan. I think I could make an agreement with Egypt.”
Mr Trump’s proposal has sent shock waves throughout the Middle East and is sure to dominate the meeting with the leader of Jordan during a particularly unstable time in the region.
Mr Trump’s observations on the relocation plan showed the pressure on King Abdullah, who would probably be flooded with his domestic crisis if the Palestinians were forced to Jordan.
More than half of Jordan’s population is estimated to be a Palestinian. The nation is already upset by the tensions between the citizens of Palestinian origin and those who are not, analysts say.
“What Mr Trump has done is the future of Jordan’s reign on the line,” said Khalil Jahshan, executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC “The strongest political movement in Jordan does not accept the idea that Jordan is Palestine.”
Prior to meeting Mr Trump at the White House, King Abdullah was scheduled to meet with Steven Witkoff, Mr Trump’s envoy to the Middle East. He was also scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz, Mr Trump’s National Security Advisor.
That the president is willing to put pressure on key allies in the area also shows that he has little intention of moving away from his quick ideas about US ownership of the territory that has suffered war and the displacement of the Palestinians.
In an interview with Fox News Bret Baier, Mr Trump has so far provided his most extensive comments on how the Gaza population in Jordan, Egypt and other nations in the region envision.
“We will build secure communities a little away from where there is all this danger,” he said. “In the meantime, I will have this. Think about it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land.”
Once he moved out, he said, the Palestinians “will have a much better housing” than in Gaza and would not have to return.
“I’m talking about building a permanent place for them,” Mr Trump said.
Mr Trump’s proposal had not been checked by the president’s top advisers before revealing it last week and some White House officials had sought to soften it, insisting that he had not committed to using US troops to cleanse the territory Relocation of the Palestinians would be temporary.
But Mr Trump has repeatedly returned to the idea, saying that other nations in the area would pay for it, that the Israeli army would provide security and that he believed it was possible to move the population of Gaza elsewhere.
The execution of such a proposal is strongly opposed to Egypt as well as by Jordan. Cairo has pushed back the acceptance of Palestinian refugees from security concerns. The fighters could target Israel from Egyptian territory, call Israeli retaliation or recruit to the local uprising in Sinai.
At the same time, the Jordanian monarchy has a tense story of Palestinian fighter factions.
The end of the right in Israel has long been argued that the Palestinians forced by Gaza and the West Bank should be re -established in Jordan. Gaza’s acceptance of Palestinians would raise concerns between the Jordanians that Israel would then try to push people out of the West Bank.
“Obviously the king cannot take these people,” said James Jeffrey, a former Syrian envoy of Mr Trump. “This is an existential issue for him.”
“This would be a murderer of a regime,” Mr Jeffrey said.
The King of Jordan himself could try to make the assumption that the forced Palestinian shift would destabilize the Middle East area and complicate the United States’ efforts to take Saudi Arabia to participate in Mr Trump’s agreements. In 2020 Abraham Accords, which established official ties between Israel and the four Arab countries.
But Jordan, like Egypt, is also among the top recipients of US military aid, providing Mr Trump leverage in his dialogue with King Abdullah.
Even before the meeting, Mr Trump doubles in his proposal meant that the king was a difficult visit to Washington.
“All this is hitting the king’s mind,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior partner of Carnegie Endowment for international peace and a former Middle East analyst and negotiator with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “The king will try to find a way to start this in the passage.”
“I think the king hopes he can avoid a bullet,” Mr Miller said.
Ephrat Libn He contributed a report from Washington.
