Hilal Khashan
Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump announced during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu his plan to take over the Gaza Strip and resettle its residents in Egypt and Jordan. A week later, he reiterated his intention during a press briefing in Washington with Jordanian King Abdullah II, who appeared uncomfortable listening to Trump’s proposal but avoided challenging the president on the matter. Fearing a similarly embarrassing situation, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi canceled his own visit to Washington set for Feb. 18.
The Palestinian question was the focal point of Arab foreign policy until the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then, Arab countries have sought various peace treaties with Israel and grown dependent on U.S. protection for their survival. Though they cannot endorse Trump’s plan to evict Palestinians from Gaza and transform the strip into a “Riviera of the Middle East,” neither can they simply dismiss his assertions. Trump has challenged Arab leaders to come up with an alternative plan for Gaza, knowing they likely cannot.
Resettlement Revisited
Many observers have compared Trump’s proposal to resettle Palestinians in neighboring countries to Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s willingness to host them in Sinai in the early 1950s. But the conditions that led Nasser to favor the resettlement of Gazan refugees differ fundamentally from the situation in the region today. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it was the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) that proposed resettling refugees who had fled to Gaza during the conflict, in accordance with U.N. General Assembly resolution 194. The initiative would not have affected the 80,000 Gaza residents who were living there before the war. Arabs generally viewed it as a humanitarian endeavor, given the wide range of relief services the agency provided, rather than a liquidation plan, as opponents of Trump’s proposal see it.
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