Across the Middle East, the art of the deal was hard to identify as U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to torpedo a Gaza ceasefire he helped achieve even as he softened his strong-arming of one of America’s closest Arab allies.
The stakes were already high for the visit Tuesday by Jordan’s King Abdullah to the White House. President Trump has been publicly pressuring him to take in Palestinian refugees forcibly relocated from Gaza, which would threaten the stability of his nation.
As they met, King Abdullah expressed a “personal relationship of friendship and trust between the two of us,” pledging to work with Mr. Trump to achieve regional peace. The president referred to the monarch as “a great man.”
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Jordanian King Abdullah’s meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump Tuesday was one of the most consequential of his 25-year reign. His mission: to get Mr. Trump to walk back his plan to relocate Gaza’s population to Jordan and Egypt, which the kingdom considers an existential threat.
Yet for a monarch all too accustomed to Middle East crises, the Oval Office meeting Tuesday was one of the most pivotal of his 25-year reign, despite the friendly overtones.
While they met, and following Mr. Trump’s lead, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel was mobilizing its troops to resume war in Gaza. He said Israel would tear up the ceasefire if Hamas did not return hostages by Saturday, though he left vague how many he was referring to. On Monday, Hamas said it would delay the release of the hostages, alleging ceasefire violations by Israel.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump doubled down on his plan for America to take over a Gaza emptied of its population, a move condemned across the Arab world as ethnic cleansing and a war crime.
“We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it,” Mr. Trump said of Gaza.
King Abdullah had arrived in Washington with a mission: to get the president to walk back plans to relocate Gazans to Jordan and Egypt while keeping his kingdom’s strategic alliance with the United States intact.
Even before Mr. Netanyahu’s threat to resume the war in Gaza, it was an uphill task.
The biggest challenge: an erratic and hard-to-read American president, who last week suddenly began pressing for U.S. “ownership” of Gaza and the permanent expulsion of Palestinians, which neither Egypt nor Jordan could accept.
Officials in Amman and Cairo have been at a loss on how to respond to the transactional president, namely: what to offer instead.
Jordan has taken on huge asks from the U.S. before: facilitate its disastrous invasion of Iraq, accept waves of Iraqi and Syrian refugees, lead the fight against the Islamic State, knock down Israel-bound Iranian rockets over its skies.
But the expulsion of Palestinians is one that King Abdullah can play no part in, not least because it would threaten the delicate demographic balance of his own country, stir popular outrage, and undermine national security. His foreign minister described such a prospect as a “state of war.”
Instead of concessions, official sources say, the monarch came to the president bearing warnings: the mass transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan would transform those countries into staging grounds for attacks, bringing the Gaza war to Israel’s eastern and southern borders.
Jordanian officials are relaying concerns that, should a mass relocation occur, Iran may target Jordan as a new base from which to wage proxy attacks on Israel.
In short, the move would make Israel less safe.
As a gesture, King Abdullah said his country was ready to take in 2,000 ill children from Gaza.
When reporters asked about his view of Mr. Trump’s ideas, King Abdullah said, “Let’s wait until the Egyptians” present ideas following a planned Arab summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at the end of the month.
“We have to look at the best interests of the United States, to the people in the region, and especially to my people in Jordan,” he said.
In a statement on the social platform X following the meeting, the king said he “reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”
President Trump is not without leverage with Jordan – namely, $1.05 billion in annual support.
Mr. Trump demurred about withholding aid when asked by reporters Tuesday. “I think we’ll do something. I don’t have to threaten with money,” he said. “I do think we’re above that.”
On Monday he mused about suspending an agreement signed by the Biden administration in 2023 committing the U.S. to more than $1 billion in annual assistance until 2029.
The cash-strapped, debt-laden, and resource-poor kingdom is reliant on U.S. assistance to help pay government and army salaries and provide services.
But even President Trump’s leverage has its limits. As one former Jordanian official told the Monitor, “Money isn’t everything, and is nothing compared to an existential threat.”
In his opening statement Tuesday, King Abdullah said of President Trump, “I finally see somebody that can take us across the finish line to bring stability, peace, and prosperity to all of us in the region.”
Yet by late Tuesday, that peace was brought to the precipice by presidential posturing.
It began with a verbal hand grenade lobbed by Mr. Trump Monday, decrying the staggered release of hostages under the painstakingly crafted Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement brokered by his own envoy along with Qatar, Egypt, and the outgoing Biden administration.
“If all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday at 12 o’clock … I would say, cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out,” he told reporters.
Mr. Netanyahu, seizing on the president’s line, declared late Tuesday that his government officially demanded the same Saturday deadline.
“If Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end, and the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will return to intense fighting until Hamas is finally defeated,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a video statement.
With war in Gaza threatening to start anew and Israel unwilling to commit to a “day-after” plan, it appeared Tuesday as if President Trump had harmed the ceasefire he helped achieve and complicated his stated goal of the U.S. taking over Gaza.
It has left a region reeling from war, reeling from diplomatic whiplash.
