Hamas and Israel are starting talks to find an agreement on extending a fragile cease-fire in Gaza as part of a three-phase peace deal, following 15 months of the Israeli military bombarding the coastal enclave in retaliation for the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
The future governance and reconstruction of the battered strip are still unclear, but Trump’s plan represents his most explicit position so far on his vision for Gaza. The U.S. president also indicated Tuesday he would likely lay out in the coming month his position on the West Bank, a territory captured from Jordan and occupied by Israel since 1967.
Arab countries have for years staunchly rejected further expulsion of Palestinians, but that stance has grown stronger since Trump re-assumed control of the White House on Jan. 20.
Foreign ministers from Arab nations including Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates rejected the transfer of Palestinians from their land under any circumstances during a meeting in Cairo on Feb. 1. For Arab countries, Palestinian officials and much of the international community, a renewed forced exile would also further weaken the future of a potential two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.
Jordan’s king Abdullah II and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi spoke over the phone Tuesday evening “to maintain close coordination on various regional developments, foremost of which is the Palestinian cause,” according to a readout from the Jordanian royal palace.
The creation of a Jewish state in 1948, led by David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency, after decades of violent pogroms and the Holocaust in Europe, is known to Palestinians as the Nakba or the “catastrophe,” which led to waves of displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to neighboring countries like Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
