WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump hosted Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday and renewed his suggestions that Gaza could be emptied of residents, controlled by the US and redeveloped as a tourist area — a plan that could likely only work if the Arab nation agrees to accept more refugees.
The pair met in the Oval Office, where Trump suggested he wouldn’t withhold US aid to Jordan or countries like Egypt, other Arab nations, if they don’t agree to dramatically increase the number of people from Gaza they take in.
“I don’t have to threaten that. I do believe we’re above that,” Trump said. That contradicted the Republican president previously suggesting that holding back aid was a possibility.
Abdullah was asked repeatedly about Trump’s audacious plan to remake the Middle East, but didn’t make substantive comments on it nor the idea that his country could accept large numbers of new refugees from Gaza.
Trump also repeated suggestions that the US could come to control Gaza, but he said that it wouldn’t require committing funds and would come to fruition. He also said that would be possible, “Under the US authority,” without elaborating what that actually was.
“We’re not going to buy anything. We’re going to have it,” Trump said of US control in Gaza. He suggested that the redeveloped area could have new hotels, office buildings and houses and “and we’ll make it exciting.”
“I can tell you about real estate. They’re going to be in love with it,” Trump, who built a New York real estate empire that catapulted him to fame, said of Gaza’s residents, while also insisting that he personally would not be involved in development.
Additionally, Trump used the meeting to renew his suggestions that a tenuous ceasefire between Hamas and Israel could be canceled if Hamas doesn’t release all of the remaining hostages it is holding by midday on Saturday.
“I don’t think they’re going to make the deadline, personally,” Trump said of Hamas. “They want to play tough guy. We’ll see how tough they are.”
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The king’s visit is happening at a perilous moment for the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza. Hamas is accusing Israel of violating the truce and said it is pausing future releases of hostages captured in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Trump has repeatedly proposed the US take control of Gaza and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” with Palestinians in the war-torn territory pushed into neighboring nations with no right of return.
His Tuesday comments contradicted his Monday suggestions that, if necessary, he would withhold US funding from Jordan and Egypt — longtime US allies and among the top recipients of its foreign aid — as a means of persuading them to accept additional Palestinians from Gaza.
Jordan is home to more than 2 million Palestinians and, along with other Arab states, has flatly rejected Trump’s plan to relocate civilians from Gaza. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said last week that his country’s opposition to Trump’s idea was “firm and unwavering.”
Besides concerns about jeopardizing the long-held goals of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Egypt and Jordan have privately raised security concerns about welcoming large numbers of additional refugees into their countries even temporarily.
The king is also meeting with top Trump administration officials during his visit, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Capitol Hill. He is the third foreign leader to hold an in-person meeting with Trump since his Jan. 20 inauguration.
Trump announced his ideas for resettling Palestinians from Gaza and taking ownership of the territory for the US during a press conference last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The president initially didn’t rule out deploying US troops to help secure Gaza but at the same time insisted no US funds would go to pay for the reconstruction of the territory, raising fundamental questions about the nature of his plan.
After Trump’s initial comments, Rubio and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that Trump only wanted Palestinians relocated from Gaza “temporarily” and sought an “interim” period to allow for debris removal, the disposal of unexploded ordnance and reconstruction.
But asked in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that aired Monday if Palestinians in Gaza would have a right to return to the territory under his plan, he replied, “No, they wouldn’t.”
