But can any Gulf leader risk facilitating what, to all intents and purposes, would amount to ethnic cleansing and a violation of international law — not to mention the fury it would whip up on their own streets, possibly imperiling their regimes?
The Salafi-Jihadist enemies of the Gulf’s royal families would make massive political capital with the uprooting of Gazans and all its echoes of past displacements, including the nakba (catastrophe) — the flight and expulsion of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.
In his speech, Trump also name-checked Egypt and Jordan as possible destinations for displaced Palestinians. However, both Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah have repeatedly opposed Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in their respective countries. They’ve also been warning him since his first week in office, when the newly inaugurated president breezily told reporters : “I have helped [Sisi] a lot, and I hope he will help us. I think he will take in Palestinians from Gaza, and I believe the King of Jordan will do the same.”
The Trump administration is gambling on being able to strong-arm Cairo and Amman by threatening to cut U.S. aid, as both countries are directly dependent on it. Without aid they would be forced to introduce austerity measures, risking political and economic turmoil. Just last week, Trump hinted at the leverage he feels he has: “They will do it. They will do it… We do a lot for them, and they’re gonna do it,” he said.
But so far, the hints of financial blackmail have not been working. The Egyptian leader repeated his rejection of resettling any Palestinians in his country last week, saying: “The displacement and removal of the Palestinian people from their lands is an injustice that we will never participate in.” And Abdullah told European officials in Brussels that Jordan remains unwavering “on the necessity of establishing Palestinians on their land and gaining their legitimate rights, in accordance with the two-state solution.”
Moreover, as these messages didn’t seem to be getting through, top diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all flatly rejected any forcible displacement of Palestinians during a meeting in Cairo on Saturday: “We affirm our rejection of [any attempts] to compromise Palestinians’ unalienable rights, whether through settlement activities, or evictions or annex of land or through vacating the land from its owners … in any form or under any circumstances or justifications,” they said in a joint communiqué.
