Marwan Muasher
The meeting on Tuesday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Jordan’s King Abdullah II was visibly painful. Trump doubled down on his idea to permanently move 2 million Palestinians out of Gaza and into Jordan and Egypt—in other words, ethnic cleansing, and a plan that all parties reject. “We will have Gaza,” Trump told reporters while sitting next to Abdullah.
King Abdullah tried his best to walk a fine line between avoiding a public confrontation with the president on their first meeting during Trump’s second presidency and unwillingness to acquiesce to a proposal with disastrous results for Jordan.
Why is that so? Jordan has received waves of Palestinian refugees in 1948, 1967, and 1990, and it currently hosts more than half a million Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Adding another million Palestinian refugees to Jordan’s 11 million inhabitants would be roughly proportional to the whole population of Ukraine moving to the United States. Such a mass displacement would present economic and security issues Jordan cannot tolerate. It would also contribute to the emptying of Palestinian lands of their inhabitants and further the Israeli right’s goal of establishing a homeland for Palestinians in Jordan, both of which would create identity issues for Jordanians. And Jordan has no geographical borders with Gaza, nor did it demolish Gaza, but Trump seemingly wants it to compensate for the destruction Israel caused.
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