In Trump’s Cross Hairs Over Taking Gazans, Egypt and Jordan Try Diversion

Finding themselves in the fickle cross hairs of President Trump, Jordan and Egypt are moving with speed — and uncertain prospects of success — to dissuade, distract and divert him from forcing them to take in Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.

For the two Arab governments, who view Mr. Trump’s proposal that they take in two million Palestinians as an existential threat, the strategy appears to be to placate the U.S. president with offers to work together to rebuild Gaza, bring peace to the region and expand humanitarian aid efforts. That could help them buy time, analysts say — perhaps enough for Mr. Trump to discard the idea as too complicated, or to recognize the strategic and security drawbacks of destabilizing two of the closest allies of the United States in the region.

Jordan’s King Abdullah employed a conciliatory tone in his meeting with Mr. Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, telling the U.S. president that his country would take in 2,000 Palestinian children with cancer and other illnesses from Gaza. Still, he otherwise gave no ground on the question of resettling more Gazans, and later repeated Jordan’s rejection of the plan in a statement on social media.

Jordan has been treating some cancer patients from Gaza for months already, making the offer more of a token than a real concession. But Mr. Trump called it a “beautiful gesture.”

Other world leaders have found that flattering Mr. Trump tends to help them get their way. King Abdullah seemed to be following their example on Tuesday, heaping praise on the president as “somebody that can take us across the finish line to bring stability, peace and prosperity” to the Middle East.

Even as the king pushed back against Mr. Trump in the post to make clear he was rejecting the mass displacement of Palestinians, he noted that the U.S. had a key role to play. “Achieving just peace on the basis of the two-state solution is the way to ensure regional stability,” he said in the post. “This requires U.S. leadership.”

Egypt, too, said it wanted to work with Mr. Trump to “achieve a comprehensive and just peace in the region by reaching a just settlement of the Palestinian cause,” according to an Egyptian statement released later Tuesday.

But the statement made no mention of participating in Mr. Trump’s proposal, and reiterated Egypt’s position that peace could be achieved only by giving the Palestinians statehood. Palestinians and many other Arabs have rejected Mr. Trump’s proposed forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza not only as ethnic cleansing, a war crime that flies in the face of international law, but also as the death knell for their long-held dream of a Palestinian state.

Egypt sought instead to serve up an alternative plan for Mr. Trump, saying in the statement that it would “present a comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in a manner that ensures the Palestinian people remain in their homeland.” The Palestinian Authority joined in with its own plan for helping Gaza recover from the war on Wednesday.

In recent days, as alarm over the president’s idea has mounted in Cairo, Egyptian officials have emphasized that Egypt stands ready to help rebuild Gaza, with which it shares a vital border crossing, as it did after previous conflicts there.

An Egyptian real estate tycoon, Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who like Mr. Trump has developed a chain of residential properties and hotels, went on an evening news show on Sunday to outline a $20 billion proposal for building 200,000 housing units in Gaza, as if trying to talk to Mr. Trump developer to developer.

But Mr. Moustafa, who is closely linked to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, said he envisioned reconstructing Gaza without moving any Palestinians out of the strip.

During the Tuesday meeting, King Abdullah also alluded several times to the need for consultations with Egypt and other Arab countries before responding to Mr. Trump’s proposal, mentioning an upcoming meeting in Riyadh with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Egypt has also called for a summit of Arab leaders to discuss the issue in Cairo on Feb. 27.

Despite the pushback from Egypt and Jordan, Mr. Trump seems to be sticking to the core of his out-of-left-field proposal for the United States to “own” Gaza and redevelop it into a “Riviera” for tourism and jobs. During the Tuesday meeting with King Abdullah and his son, Crown Prince Hussein, he said that “we will have Gaza” and “we’re going to take it.”

But he appeared to soften his previous threat to cut funding to Jordan and Egypt, two of the top recipients of U.S. aid, if they did not accept Gaza’s Palestinians, saying, “We’re above that.”

Mr. Trump also suggested that he was looking at a broader group of countries that could receive Gazans. “We have other countries that want to get involved,” he said, and when a journalist asked whether two of those countries could be Albania and Indonesia, he responded, “Yeah, sure.” (The leaders of both countries have dismissed any such possibility.)

Middle East experts say that Mr. Trump appears to be ignoring previous U.S. calculations about the importance of stability in Egypt and Jordan, Arab neighbors of Israel who both made peace with Israel years ago and cooperate closely with the United States on security matters.

“The way that he talks about these relationships, it is as if these countries are takers, and that we get very little out of them,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute who focuses on Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians.

In fact, many human rights advocates and critics of Egypt have questioned how wise the U.S. investment in Egypt is, arguing that it props up a repressive regime that often goes against U.S. interests. But analysts say the cooperation of Egypt and especially Jordan on regional security has been valuable to the United States.

Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military assistance to buy weapons, making it the second-largest recipient of such financing after Israel, has worked with the United States on counterterrorism efforts.

Jordan has been the United States’ gateway to the Middle East for decades, hosting a U.S. military base and a large Central Intelligence Agency station and acting as a diplomatic hub. Like Egypt, the Jordanian monarchy shares the U.S. view of militant Islam as a major threat and has supported the United States in its fight against Al Qaeda and then the Islamic State, among other common enemies.

When Iran targeted Israel with missiles and drones last year, Jordan also helped to shoot some of them down.

Jordan has “been with us lock step,” Mr. Katulis said.

Rania Khaled contributed reporting from Cairo.