International outrage in recent days has focused on Donald Trump’s proposal that the US take “ownership” of Gaza, and that more than two million Palestinians be displaced to allow the territory to be transformed from “a demolition site” into a “riviera” in the Middle East.
In Jordan and Egypt, the demand that both countries accept huge numbers of Palestinians from Gaza – potentially on a permanent basis – has prompted equal concern. Leaders of both countries immediately rejected the proposal, and the Jordanian king, Abdullah II, and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, are heading to Washington in an attempt to convince Trump to change course.
“They are terrified that an Israeli policy of population transfer will actually become real,” said Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow of the Middle East programme at the Chatham House thinktank in London.
Abdullah and Sisi know that they are vulnerable to Trump’s trademark transactional style of geopolitics as their countries’ economies and security depend heavily on huge levels of US aid and trade.
