Arab states will have to stand up to Trump to avert ethnic cleansing of Gaza

King Abdullah II of Jordan met with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. It’s hard to imagine a more difficult meeting for the Hashemite King. 

With Abdullah sitting next to him and looking very tense and unhappy, Trump reiterated his plan for the United States to “take” Gaza and expel the two million Palestinians living there. Abdullah did his best to be diplomatic; he cannot afford to anger Trump with Jordan’s economy reeling, its political condition fragile, and the country already strained with refugees from the conflict in Syria.

Jordan needs U.S. support, and Trump knows it. He also seems to be aware that, while his administration has put a hold on foreign aid for the moment, it won’t serve U.S. interests, or Israeli ones, for the Hashemite regime to fall, which is one of the more likely outcomes if the U.S. cuts or suspends aid indefinitely.  

Asked by a reporter if he was still considering threatening aid to Jordan if it refused to take in displaced Palestinians from Gaza, Trump responded, “I do think we’re above that. We contribute a lot of money to Jordan and to Egypt, by the way, a lot to both, but I don’t have to threaten that.”

Abdullah tried to offer an olive branch to Trump and help some Palestinian children who desperately need it at the same time, by offering to take in some 2,000 children from Gaza who are in dire need of the kind of medical care they cannot find easily in the devastated Strip after Israel destroyed its health care infrastructure. 

Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi stated flatly that he would not visit the White House as long as the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza was on the table. It seems likely that Sisi’s more forceful stance was coordinated with Abdullah’s diplomatic tone.

But the two leaders expressed the same stance, and they are not standing alone. While Sisi made the Arab stance plain, Abdullah, speaking beside Trump, told reporters, “We will be in Saudi Arabia to discuss how we can work with the president and with the United States. So I think let’s wait until the Egyptians can come and present it to the president, and not get ahead of ourselves.” 

It is difficult to imagine an Arab plan that will meet with satisfaction in both the White House and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office. Trump’s plan may be short on realism and details, but it is already taking on a life of its own in Israel, and, with the ceasefire (which Israel has been increasingly violating) hanging by a thread, the renewed danger to the people of Gaza is growing.

Opposition in the Arab world

The interests of the Arab state leaders vary, and many would (and have) happily sell out the Palestinians for those interests. But even there, the explicit ethnic cleansing that Trump has discussed goes too far.

We can gauge this by looking at reports of what has been airing on mainstream Saudi Arabian channels. Saudi media generally hews strongly toward support of Saudi foreign policy and, as such, tends to be guarded when talking about the Palestinians. 

But the current reporting is different. When Netanyahu suggested that Saudi Arabia make some space within its territory for a Palestinian state, the Saudi foreign ministry reacted with an angry statement of condemnation. In it, they referred to Netanyahu without his official title, which is out of step with their usual practice. State-run media channel Al-Ikhbariya confirmed this was intentional and added, “The name of the state no longer applies to Israel.” Another commentator later added that Netanyahu in “a Zionist, son of a Zionist” and stated that “the occupation has one face, and that face is Benjamin Netanyahu”.

These attacks mark a sharp break from the conciliatory language Saudi Arabia has been trying to present as it pursues normalization with Israel, an idea that has now been put on indefinite hold as long as Israel and the U.S. continue to treat the Palestinian issue in the manner they are doing. 

It’s not just that Saudi Arabia is attacking Netanyahu through its media. Their tone on Hamas has undergone a sharp makeover. Hamas’ association with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is despised by the Saudi royal family, has generally meant unfavorable portrayals in the Saudi media. 

That has changed, with some analysts even going as far as suggesting that Saudi Arabia should establish ties with Hamas, something it has not done in the past. More broadly, the Saudi media is acknowledging that Hamas is an inseparable part of Palestinian society and politics. 

This can all certainly revert back quickly, but it is a mark of the obstacles the U.S. and Israel are putting in the path of the normalization agreement they claim to want so badly that Saudi Arabia is speaking, both indirectly and directly, in these terms. Whether Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman or any other member of the Saudi royal family truly cares about Palestinians or not, Saudi Arabia’s power derives, in part, from its position in the Arab and Muslim world. That position will be severely jeopardized, as will the security of the kingdom itself if the royal family is perceived to be abandoning the Palestinians openly.

This, together with Abdullah’s claim that Trump will soon see an Arab alternative to his plan of ethnic cleansing, suggests that the Saudis—who, after all, are the key players in Trump’s views and plans in the Middle East—will offer Trump a plan that would allow for the United States, as well as Saudi Arabia and likely other Arab states, to have a significant stake in reconstructing Gaza and in its post-reconstruction future. 

That’s far from ideal, obviously, and it’s rife with dangers. But if Trump accepts such a plan (Israel certainly won’t) and sees enough advantage in it, he may back it. That would mean, at the very least, a further delay in Israel’s ability to pursue its ethnic cleansing and renewing its genocidal onslaught. It would buy time for more options to open in the near future. 

Unfortunately, it’s hard to see the Arab states coming up with a plan that meets that standard. It would have to be enough for Trump to back away from his proclamations and push Israel to accept it. It’s hard, maybe impossible, to imagine what such a plan might be. 

Abdullah succeeded in kicking the can down the road, at least until the February 27 summit in Cairo between the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The UAE Ambassador to the U.S. recently poured some cold water on hopes for that summit, telling a reporter that he couldn’t see a better alternative to Trump’s plan. 

Support in Israel

The Israeli public, by contrast, loves Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza. A poll conducted by the Jerusalem Post showed that 65% of Israelis support Trump’s plan, with another 14% backing it if the transfer is “voluntary.” Only 16% opposed the idea. 

Three Israeli television stations conducted similar polls, with similar results: 76%, 72%, and 69% supporting the plan, respectively.

Clearly, there is a mandate in Israel for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza. Yet even extremist pro-Israel advocates in the United States are skeptical. Jonathan Schanzer of the fanatically pro-Israel Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) noted that there is just no way Jordan can do what Trump wants it to.

“The numbers, the demographics in Jordan, are already to some extent a threat to the regime,” Schanzer told Jewish Insider. “Adding to that will only make matters worse, and it would absolutely further dilute the power structures long controlled by … the traditional Arab tribes of Jordan.”

Schanzer’s ethnocentric language and implicit comfort with war crimes aside, he does grasp the practical impossibility of Trump’s plan. 

Ben Fishman of the AIPAC-spawned think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) told Jewish Insider that it would be extremely problematic for Jordan because it touches on the dream of the Israeli and pro-Israeli right for Jordan to be transformed into a Palestinian state. He noted that the view of the Jordanian population (and, we might add, that of the Palestinian people) is that “Jordan is Jordan, and the Palestinian state should be the Palestinian state.”

When such strong pro-Israel figures see these problems, it is all the more notable that the Trump administration seems to lack any grasp of them. But that doesn’t mean the idea isn’t moving forward.

With the support of so much of the Israeli public, the Israeli military could very well force the issue when it fully resumes its offensive in Gaza.

Almost as soon as Trump revealed his intent to ethnically cleanse, Gaza, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the Israeli military to devise a plan to facilitate the “voluntary” exit of Palestinians from Gaza. 

When Israel calls a Palestinian exit from Gaza “voluntary,” they mean that a Palestinian has “voluntarily” fled for their life as Israeli soldiers killed those around them and fired their bullets and bombs at fleeing Palestinian backs.

Facilitating that exodus means that Israel would create a situation where Egypt and other Arab countries would be forced to accommodate the refugees in some way. This is, in fact, exactly what Egypt feared Israel would do last year when they constructed a large camp in the Sinai in which to hold Palestinians who might have been forced to flee Israel’s assault on Rafah. 

Brutal though that onslaught was, it failed to force a flood of refugees across the Egyptian border. This time, the backing of the U.S. for the ethnic cleansing will be even stronger, or at least more explicit. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Washington, “Israel…can’t allow Hamas to use the ceasefire to rebuild itself and recover strength.” Rubio’s words seem to advocate an end to the ceasefire. 

Israel has been dragging its feet on negotiating phase two of the ceasefire deal, which is supposed to take effect in the first week of March. It has become clear that Netanyahu has no intention of allowing that second phase—which would see the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of all living Israeli hostages—to come about. 

Even aside from Trump’s proclamations, Netanyahu, even when he is not talking fancifully about “completely eliminating Hamas” has never wavered from his statements that Israel will continue to press the attack on Gaza until Hamas is eliminated as a political and military force. Given that Hamas continues to be a vital part of the Palestinian body politic, and that the genocide has only encouraged even more young Palestinians to join Hamas, it is certain that, by whatever means necessary, Netanyahu will resume the attacks. 

Israel was the party that wanted to see the ceasefire end. Israeli officials anonymously confirmed that Hamas’ accusations about ceasefire violations were accurate. But Netanyahu isn’t ready to abandon all of the hostages yet. 

It’s not that he cares about them; he could have freed them all by halting the genocide 15 months ago. But there has been an increase in the Israeli public’s concern about the hostages after seeing the condition of some who were released, having obviously been undernourished and reportedly having faced abusive conditions. As a result, Netanyahu needs to see the first phase, which will free civilian and female military hostages, through to the end. 

There will still be significant pressure to secure the release of the remaining hostages, who would be male Israeli soldiers, but it is likely to be less than what exists now. At that point, as many of us expected, the first and only phase of this ceasefire will end, with the prospects of renewed genocide and a tidal wave of ethnic cleansing looming.