Finding in the fickle hair of President Trump, Jordan and Egypt are moving with speed – and the uncertain perspectives of success – to dissuade, distract him and distract him from the forcing them to take the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
For the two Arab governments, which consider Trump’s proposal that assume two million Palestinians as an existential threat, the strategy seems to be to appease the President of the United States with offers to work together to reconstruct Gaza, bring peace to the region and expand humanitarian aid efforts. This could help them buy time, analysts say – perhaps enough for Mr. Trump to discard the too complicated idea or to recognize the strategic and safety disadvantages of the destabilization of two of the closest allies in the United States in the region.
Jordan Abdullah’s king employed a conciliatory tone in his meeting with Mr. Trump in the oval office Tuesday, telling the President of the United States that his country would take 2,000 Palestinian children with cancer and other diseases from Gaza. However, otherwise he did not give reason on the question of reign more Gaza, and later he repeated Jordan’s refusal of the plan in a declaration on social media.
Jordan has already edited some cancer patients from Gaza for months, making the offer more than a sign than a real concession. But Mr. Trump called him a “beautiful gesture”.
Other world leaders have discovered that Mr. Trump flattering tends to help them make his way. King Abdullah seemed to follow their example Tuesday, accumulating praise to the president as “someone who can take us through the finish line to bring stability, peace and prosperity” to the Middle East.
Even if the king pushed himself against Mr. Trump in the mail to clarify that he was rejecting the mass displacement of the Palestinians, he noticed that the United States had a key role to play. “Reaching peace only on the basis of the two -states solution is the way to guarantee regional stability,” he said in the mail. “This requires leadership in the United States.”
Egypt also said they wanted to work with Mr. Trump to “reach a complete and just peace in the region reaching a right settlement of the Palestinian cause”, according to an Egyptian declaration issued on Tuesday later.
But the declaration did not mention the participation in Mr. Trump’s proposal and reiterated the Egyptian position according to which peace could only be reached by giving Palestinians the state road. The Palestinians and many other Arabs have rejected the forced displacement proposal of the Palestinians of Gaza by Trump, not only as ethnic cleaning, a war crime that flies in front of international law, but also as death for their dream of Long date of a Palestinian state.
Egypt, on the other hand, tried to serve an alternative plan for Mr. Trump, saying in the declaration that “would present a complete vision for the reconstruction of the Gaza strip in order to ensure that the Palestinian people remained in their homeland”. The Palestinian authority joined his plan to help Gaza recover from Wednesday’s war.
In the last few days, since the alarm for the president’s idea has risen to Cairo, Egyptian officials have underlined that Egypt is ready to help reconstruct Gaza, with whom he shares a vital border passage, as he did later previous conflicts there.
An Egyptian real estate magnate, Hisham Talaat Moustafa, who like Mr. Trump developed a residential chain and hotels, made a evening news on Sunday to outline a proposal of $ 20 billion for the construction of 200,000 housing units in Gaza, such as If he tries to talk to the Trump developer with the developer.
But Mr. Moustafa, who is closely linked to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattoh El-Sisi, said he had imagined to reconstruct Gaza without moving any Palestinian outside the Striscia.
During Tuesday’s meeting, King Abdullah also mentioned several times to the need for consultations with Egypt and other Arab countries before responding to Mr. Trump, mentioning a next meeting in Riyad with the hereditary prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia. Egypt also asked for a summit of the Arab leaders to discuss the matter in Cairo on February 27.
Despite the Pushback of Egypt and Jordan, Trump seems to stick to the nucleus of his off -field proposal for the United States to “possess” Gaza and redevelop it in a “Riviera” for tourism and work. During Tuesday’s meeting with King Abdullah and his son, the hereditary prince Hussein, he said that “we will have Gaza” and “we will take it”.
But he seemed to soften his previous threat to cut funding to Jordan and Egypt, two of the best recipients of the US aid, if they did not accept the Palestinians of Gaza, saying: “We are above that”.
Trump also suggested that he was looking at a larger group of countries capable of receiving Gazas. “We have other countries that want to be involved,” he said, and when a journalist asked if two of those countries could be Albania and Indonesia, he replied: “Yes, of course”. (The leaders of both countries have rejected this possibility.)
The experts of the Middle East say that Mr. Trump seems to ignore the previous US calculations on the importance of stability in Egypt and Jordan, near Arab of Israel who have both made peace with Israel years ago and collaborate in close contact with the United States on issues security.
“The way in which it talks about these relationships, is as if these countries were buyers and that we get very little”, said Brian Katulis, an elderly member of the Middle East that focuses on Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians.
In fact, many supporters of human rights and critics of Egypt have questioned how wise the American investment in Egypt is, claiming that it supports a repressive regime that often goes against US interests. But analysts say that Egypt’s cooperation and in particular Jordan on regional security was precious for the United States.
Egypt, who receives $ 1.3 billion a year in US military assistance to buy weapons, making it the second largest recipient of these funding after Israel, worked with the United States for anti -terrorism efforts.
Jordan was the United States door to the Middle East for decades, hosting a US military base and a large central intelligence agency station and acting as a diplomatic hub. Like Egypt, the Jordanian monarchy shares the vision of the United States of militant Islam as a serious threat and supported the United States in its fight against Qaeda and then the Islamic State, among other common enemies.
When Iran targeted Israel with missiles and drones last year, Jordan also contributed to shooting some.
Jordan was “with us a locking step,” Kitulis said.
Egypt and Jordan both accepted Palestinian refugees after being displaced during the 1948 war that surrounded the creation of the state of Israel, and Egypt has now assumed at least 100,000 Palestinian medical evacuations and other people who fled from Gaza.
But analysts say that both countries prefer to risk losing US aid rather than alienating their populations by appearing accomplices of Gaza’s ethnic cleaning.
For Jordan, taking on a large number of Palestinians forced to leave Gaza is unacceptable because it could expand a rift existing among citizens who are of Palestinian origin and those who are not, destabilizing the monarchy, say analysts. More than half of the 12 million subjects of King Abdullah are of Palestinian origin.
Jordan already hosts about 700,000 refugees, including Syrians and Iraqis and Palestinians. That largely impoverished population has almost overwhelmed the limited resources of the small town.
The proposal of Mr. Trump also inflames the fears that Israel will guide the Palestinians from the West Bank occupied in Jordan, a long -standing ambition of the far -right Israelis.
The Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, mentioned these fears on Wednesday, saying: “Today attention is concentration on Gaza and tomorrow will move to the West Bank, with the aim of emptying the historic Palestine of his natives , something that is unacceptable. “
Egypt also sees the possibility that the Palestinians reached in Egypt as a serious threat to security. Forced Palestinians could launch attacks against Israel from Egyptian soil, affirm officials, inviting Israeli military retaliation.
Rania Khaled Relationships contributed by Cairo.