Financial Times: Trump presses Egypt, Jordan to accept Gaza evacuation plan

Donald Trump has stepped up pressure on Egypt to absorb Palestinians from Gaza, raising the possibility that the US president could use the massive aid package as leverage to push his idea of resettling residents of the devastated territory.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday, Trump reiterated his call, which has angered Palestinians and Arabs across the Middle East, for Egypt and Jordan to take in Gazans and help "empty" the territory. He said he had spoken with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Asked about Sisi’s reaction, Trump said: “I hope some of them will accept. We’ve helped them a lot, and I’m sure he will help us.” He added: “He’s my friend. He’s in a very troubled part of the world, frankly. As they say, it’s a tough neighborhood. But I think he will, and I think the king of Jordan will, too.”

But Egyptian officials denied any contact between Trump and Sisi took place. Since Trump first floated the idea over the weekend, both Cairo and Amman have strongly rejected it, fearing it would undermine decades-old Palestinian hopes for an independent state and security.

Analysts said Trump's comments, which came just days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered an immediate halt to nearly all U.S. foreign aid programs, reflected Washington's potential leverage over both Egypt and Jordan, as well as the president's willingness to exploit it.

“These are classic Trump negotiating tactics, where he starts with an extreme position to reach a compromise,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House. But she noted that Trump’s demands touch on “existential” issues for both Jordan and Egypt.

On Tuesday, Egypt's state-run Al-Ahram newspaper ran a large front-page photo of displaced Palestinians returning to northern Gaza, with the headline: "Egypt is united: People reject displacement, support efforts to protect national security, as Palestinians write 'epic of return'."

Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, however, flatly rejected the idea, saying on Sunday that “the solution to the Palestinian issue lies in Palestine.” He added: “Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians.”

Arab leaders have long warned against any move to displace Palestinians from Gaza, saying it would be a repeat of 1948, when hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes or fled during the fighting that accompanied Israel’s creation. Palestinians refer to that period as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe.

While it is unclear how far Trump is willing to go in this direction, one of the main pressure points on Egypt is the $1.3 billion in annual military aid that Cairo uses to buy American weapons and spare parts for its military equipment, said Michael Wahid-Hanna, director of the United States program at the International Crisis Group.

Hanna explained that this aid, which began in 1978 when Cairo took its first steps towards the peace agreement with Israel, which was signed the following year, was the “fundamental pillar of relations” between the two countries, and its total value amounted to more than $50 billion over the years.

Military aid to both Egypt and Israel was exempted from Rubio's three-month freeze on international aid.

Hanna added that if Trump tried to force Egypt to accept the Palestinians displaced from Gaza, it would be a “fundamental shift in the relationship.” He pointed out that the United States, for a long time, operated under the assumption that this would be dangerous for Egypt and should be avoided.

When the idea of resettling the Palestinians was raised at the beginning of the war on Gaza, Egypt argued that it might lead to internal destabilization, because the Egyptian army and public opinion would not accept it.

“The mass influx of Palestinians could raise fears of a revival of the insurgency [led by an ISIS-linked group] in Sinai due to the overlap of Palestinian and Egyptian militants,” Hanna said.

Analysts believe that the United States may use similar pressure on Jordan, as Washington is the largest donor of foreign aid, on which Jordan's fragile economy depends heavily.

According to the US Embassy in Amman, the United States has provided $31 billion in bilateral assistance since the two countries established relations in 1949, and the two sides recently signed a memorandum of understanding that guarantees Washington will provide $1.45 billion in annual assistance through 2029.

Diplomats said officials in Amman were seeking to quickly understand Trump’s intentions, and that the United States could apply additional pressure beyond the aid suspension, such as imposing tariffs. “Given the current state of the Jordanian economy, any move could have a bigger impact than some might expect,” one said.

A large-scale influx of Palestinians into Jordan would have major repercussions on the country’s delicate political and economic situation, with a population of 11 million, while Jordan already hosts more than two million Palestinians, and its economy is suffering from the burden of hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

Sanem Vakil said that implementing Trump’s idea “would greatly threaten the security balance in both countries, as well as the political legitimacy of their leaders.” She added: “It would be very difficult for Egypt and Jordan to make concessions on this issue and change their positions quickly, as we saw in cases like Colombia or Canada when they were pressured by Trump. The situation here is completely different.”

Source: Financial Times