US President has suggested to move Gazans to Egypt and Gaza.
It depends on how serious Trump is about the idea and how far he is prepared to
go. Let us explore the likely outcomes.
One of Trump’s favorite economic tools impositions of new tariffs
or outright sanctions that could be devastating for Jordan and Egypt. The two
countries receive billions of dollars in American aid each year, and
Egypt is already mired in an economic crisis.
Allowing an influx of refugees could also be destabilizing.
Egypt says it is currently hosting some 9 million migrants, including refugees
from Sudan’s civil war. Jordan, with a population of less than 12 million, is
hosting over 700,000 refugees, mainly from Syria.
US
pressure would also risk alienating key allies in the region with whom Trump
has had good relations — not only el-Sissi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II,
but the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, all of whom support the
Palestinian cause.
That would potentially complicate efforts to broker a
historic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel to normalize relations,
something Trump tried to do during his previous term and expects to complete in
his current one.
Trump’s suggestion that Egypt and Jordan take in
Palestinians from the war-ravaged Gaza Strip is likely to be met with
a hard “no” from the two US allies and the Palestinians themselves who fear
Israel would never allow them to return.
“I’d rather get
involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different
location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change,” Trump said.
The
idea is likely to be welcomed by Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s far-right governing partners have long advocated what they describe
as the voluntary migration of large numbers of Palestinians and the
reestablishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza.
Human rights groups have already accused Israel of
ethnic cleansing, which United Nations experts have defined as a policy
designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove the civilian population of
another group from certain areas “by violent and terror-inspiring means.”
History of Displacement
Before
and during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, some 700,000
Palestinians — a majority of the prewar population — fled or were driven from
their homes in what is now Israel, an event they commemorate as the Nakba
— Arabic for catastrophe.
Israel
refused to allow them to return because it would have resulted in a Palestinian
majority within its borders. The refugees and their descendants now number
around 6 million, with large communities in Gaza, where they make up the
majority of the population, as well as the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jordan,
Lebanon and Syria.
In the 1967 Mideast war, when Israel seized the West
Bank and Gaza Strip, 300,000 more Palestinians fled, mostly into Jordan.
The decades-old refugee crisis has been a major driver of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was one of the thorniest issues in peace
talks that last broke down in 2009. The Palestinians claim a right of return,
while Israel says they should be absorbed by surrounding Arab countries.
Many
Palestinians view the latest war in Gaza, in which entire neighborhoods have
been shelled to oblivion and 90% of the population of 2.3 million have been
forced from their homes, as a new Nakba. They fear that if large numbers of
Palestinians leave Gaza, then they too may never return.
Steadfastly remaining on one’s land is central to
Palestinian culture, and was on vivid display in Gaza on Sunday, when thousands
of people tried to return to the most heavily destroyed part of the territory.
Egypt
and Jordan fiercely rejected the idea of accepting Gaza refugees early in the
war, when it was floated by some Israeli officials.
Both
countries have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian
state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel
captured in the 1967 Mideast war. They fear that the permanent displacement of
Gaza’s population could make that impossible.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi has also warned of
the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to
Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.
Hamas
and other militant groups are deeply rooted in Palestinian society and are
likely to move with the refugees, which would mean that future wars would be
fought on Egyptian soil, something that could unravel the historic Camp
David peace treaty, a cornerstone of regional stability.
“The peace which we have achieved would vanish from our
hands,” el-Sissi said in October 2023, after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel
triggered the war. “All for the sake of the idea of eliminating the Palestinian
cause.”
That’s what happened in Lebanon in the 1970s, when Yasser
Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, the leading militant group of its
time, transformed the country’s south into a launchpad for attacks on Israel.
The
refugee crisis and the PLO’s actions helped push Lebanon into a 15-year civil
war in 1975. Israel invaded twice and occupied southern Lebanon from 1982 until
2000.
Jordan, which clashed with the PLO and expelled it under
similar circumstances in 1970, already hosts more than 2 million Palestinian
refugees, the majority of whom have been granted citizenship.
Israeli ultranationalists have long suggested that Jordan be
considered a Palestinian state so that Israel can keep the West Bank, which
they view as the biblical heartland of the Jewish people. Jordan’s monarchy has
vehemently rejected that scenario.
