Egypt, Jordan resist Trump proposal on Palestinians

Donald Trump has continued to insist that Amman and Cairo will accept 1.5 million Palestinians from Gaza although both Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi have repeatedly rejected his proposition. Stubborn Trump has even backed up his command with a threat: “They’re going to do it. We do a lot for them, and they’re going to do it.”

Commentators have suggested he could slap tariffs on these countries if their leaders persist in rejection. Tariffs are not an issue. Both countries receive massive US financial aid.

Trump’s suspension for 90 days of all foreign aid — except to Israel and Egypt — until he decides what suits his agenda is concerning for both King Abdullah as well as President Sisi. This is because Trump has made it clear his agenda differs from theirs and his thinking does not relate to regional realities.

King Abdullah reiterated the kingdom’s longstanding position “on the need to keep Palestinians on their land and to guarantee their legitimate rights” in accordance with the two-state solution. President Sisi said the current war was not just targeting Hamas “but also an attempt to push the civilian inhabitants to... migrate to Egypt.” He warned this could wreck peace in the region.

Under a 2022 strategic cooperation agreement, the US has committed to provide Jordan with $1.45 billion a year through 2029, the overall sum being $10.15 billion. The US has supplied Jordan with military and economic aid since 1951. The amount has doubled and tripled over time. The total for the past 15 years is about 26.4 billion.

Last Friday, Jordan and the European Union concluded an agreement on a 2025-2027 financial package which allocates $3.23 billion in grants, investments and financial assistance. Despite his total ignorance of regional affairs, Trump would not dare withhold this aid. As a Jordanian friend remarked several years ago, “Jordan is the dumping ground” for people fleeing regional conflicts.

During Israel’s 1948 war of conquest in Palestine, Jordan’s Arab Legion captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank which received hundreds of thousands of the 750,000 Palestinians ethnically cleansed by Israel while thousands crossed into. Jordan. Tens of thousands of the refugees were accommodated in camps served by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

In 1967, Israel seized East Jerusalem and the West Bank and expelled another 250,000 Palestinians into Jordan which accepted them as the kingdom had ruled these territories for 19 years. Many settled in UNRWA camps.

UNRWA’S operations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories have this past week been banned by Israel with Trump’s backing. If Gazans were expelled from the Israeli-devastated strip, there would be no place for them to go in Jordan which has not welcomed or granted citizenship to previously displaced Gazans.

Jordan has hosted 750,000 to one million Iraqis driven from their country by the 1991 and 2003 US wars on their country. While many Iraqis were doctors, engineers and businessmen who found employment, only 30 per cent of the 70 per cent of Iraqis of working age are employed. Because of Jordan’s experience with Palestinian refugees, Iraqis have not been settled in camps and those who are not registered with the Jordanian authorities have become “invisible” refugees relying on financial transfers from relatives, UN agencies, or charities.

Many are among the poorest of the poor. Since unrest erupted in Syria in 2011, Jordan also received 1.3 million Syrian refugees. Only 18 per cent lives in two refugee camps. Zaatari camp hosts 80,000 refugees while Azraq camp is home of 40,000. More than half of those outside the camps lived in poverty and 20 per cent is food insecure, the UN reports.

Since signing the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has received $1.3 billion annually from the US. This funds education, humanitarian aid, economic growth, agriculture, health, and infrastructure.

If this were withdrawn or disrupted, Trump would be accused of violating the 1979 peace deal with Israel which has been deeply unpopular with a majority of Egyptians who have since 2023 been enraged by Israel’s Gaza war. Although Egypt ruled Gaza from 1948 to 1967, Cairo has never accepted permanent settlement of Palestinian refugees.

At present there are about 100,000 who have stayed temporarily in Egypt since October 2023 when Israel launched its onslaught on Gaza.

After Trump insisted on a mass tramsfer of Gazans, Sisi doubled down on his rejection. Sisi said displacing “Palestinian people from their land is an injustice we cannot take part in. It can never be tolerated or allowed because of its impact on Egyptian national security.” He reaffirmed Egypt’s demand for the two-state solution.

Thousands of Egyptians rallied at the Gaza-Egypt border crossing on Friday to protest Trumps’s proposal, Egypt has argued that Hamas and other Palestinian militants could enter Egypt if there is a mass expulsion from Gaza. Palestinian fighters could remain in Sinai and mount attacks into Israel. This would put paid to the peace treaty. Egypt has recently pacified Sinai where there had been an uprising led by local Daesh fighters and Bedouin. Hamas was accused of supporting their rebellion.

According to the United Nations Organisation for Migration, Egypt, which is dealing with an economic crisis, already hosts around nine million refugees and migrants, including some 300,000 Sudanese who arrived this year after fighting began in their country.

Sudanese account for four million, Syrians 1.5 million, Yemenis one million and Libyans one million. Egypt has called on the European Union and others to share the $10 billion annual cost of hosting these refugees and migrants. Trump has not offered to take in any Gazans on either a temporary or permanent basis.

Indeed, he has halted the flow into the US of refugees and migrants, including Afghans who worked with the US occupation regime in their country and whose lives are at risk from vengeful Taliban. It is ironic that Trump should take a tough line with migrants.

His grandparents were migrants from the German principality of Bavaria, his mother an economic migrant from a poor Scottish island who worked as a maid in the US, and two of his three wives are migrants. Ivana Trump is from the Czech Republic while Melania is from Slovenia. As all Trump migrants have been from Europe, his determination to target the flow into the US of Central and South America and deport migrants from that region, in particular smacks of racism.