However can any Gulf chief danger facilitating what, to all intents and functions, would quantity to ethnic cleaning and a violation of worldwide legislation — to not point out the fury it might whip up on their very own streets, presumably imperiling their regimes?
The Salafi-Jihadist enemies of the Gulf’s royal households would make large political capital with the uprooting of Gazans and all its echoes of previous displacements, together with the nakba (disaster) — the flight and expulsion of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.
In his speech, Trump additionally name-checked Egypt and Jordan as doable locations for displaced Palestinians. Nonetheless, each Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah have repeatedly opposed Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians from the Gaza Strip of their respective international locations. They’ve additionally been warning him since his first week in workplace, when the newly inaugurated president breezily advised reporters : “I’ve helped [Sisi] so much, and I hope he’ll assist us. I feel he’ll soak up Palestinians from Gaza, and I imagine the King of Jordan will do the identical.”
The Trump administration is playing on with the ability to strong-arm Cairo and Amman by threatening to chop U.S. assist, as each international locations are immediately depending on it. With out assist they’d be pressured to introduce austerity measures, risking political and financial turmoil. Simply final week, Trump hinted on the leverage he feels he has: “They may do it. They may do it… We do so much for them, and so they’re gonna do it,” he mentioned.
However to date, the hints of monetary blackmail haven’t been working. The Egyptian chief repeated his rejection of resettling any Palestinians in his nation final week, saying: “The displacement and removing of the Palestinian folks from their lands is an injustice that we are going to by no means take part in.” And Abdullah advised European officers in Brussels that Jordan stays unwavering “on the need of building Palestinians on their land and gaining their reputable rights, in accordance with the two-state resolution.”
Furthermore, as these messages didn’t appear to be getting via, prime diplomats from Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all flatly rejected any forcible displacement of Palestinians throughout a gathering in Cairo on Saturday: “We affirm our rejection of [any attempts] to compromise Palestinians’ unalienable rights, whether or not via settlement actions, or evictions or annex of land or via vacating the land from its house owners … in any type or below any circumstances or justifications,” they mentioned in a joint communiqué.
