Within 24 hours of US President Donald Trump meeting Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the White House released a recorded video of Trump praising the king after a humiliating exchange in front of the media.

(Article by Raja Abdulhaq republished from MiddleEastEye.net)

During their meeting, Trump pushed the king to accept his plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan, leaving Abdullah struggling to find an appropriate response.

In the lead-up to the meeting, Trump threatened to cut aid to Jordan and Egypt should they reject his plan. Egypt has since repeated its refusal and stressed the importance of ending the war and rebuilding Gaza without displacement, while President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi reportedly postponed a visit to the White House to avoid discussing Trump’s proposal.

King Abdullah, on the other hand, seemed to signal his openness to the idea by asserting that he would do what’s best for his country – an apparent deviation from the long-standing official Jordanian position of rejecting the displacement of Palestinians from their homeland.

The king himself, along with his foreign minister and the White House press secretary, all later reiterated Jordan’s official position of rejecting any displacement plans.

These desperate attempts to clarify Jordan’s position, despite Trump’s bullying rhetoric, highlight the importance of Jordan for US power and influence in the region.

Although Trump had already backtracked on his ultimatums against Jordan and Egypt, his video praising the king should be seen as an intervention of the US bureaucracy, as Trump’s words have clearly become a liability for the American empire.

Severe backlash

While the US could attempt to unilaterally force Jordan and Egypt to accept the Gaza displacement plan, the backlash against American interests in the region would be severe.

Both regimes are vital to US hegemony in the region, especially in relation to Israel. Agreeing to a large-scale displacement of Palestinians would undermine the Egyptian and Jordanian regimes, both morally and politically.

Jordan and Egypt are responsible for protecting the borders of Israel against attacks and arms smuggling to Palestinian resistance groups. They also work to contain local political actors who oppose American hegemony and the Israeli occupation.

Since the Nakba in 1948, Jordan has struggled to deal with the presence of Palestinian refugees within its borders. The 1964 formation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and the strong presence of the Palestinian resistance in Jordan, complicated matters further.

After expelling Palestinian revolutionary forces to Lebanon in 1971, Jordan began a process of “Jordanisation”, aiming to create a single national identity that eclipsed the Palestinian presence. This left Palestinian refugees in the country in a vulnerable position, similar to other immigrants pushed to assimilate into the American “melting pot”.

The Palestinian cause became a secondary issue, as Jordan’s borders with Israel were secured against attacks under the pretext of preserving Jordan’s national security. Jordan doubled down on its commitment to protecting Israel’s borders with the signing of their 1994 peace treaty.

Accepting displaced Palestinians from Gaza into Jordan wouldn’t just be a public relations nightmare for the regime; it would also undermine every aspect of the Jordanisation project that has been pivotal in streamlining the country’s political discourse, benefitting the US and Israel.

Alongside the social and economic impacts of taking in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Jordan would struggle to assimilate the newly displaced population, risking political destabilisation. The last thing the Jordanian regime needs is a rerun of the 1960s.

Existential threat

Egypt, meanwhile, has played a critical role in recent years in suffocating Gaza through the destruction of more than 2,000 tunnels and the razing of Rafah to create a five-kilometre buffer zone, aiming to stop the smuggling of weapons. This has helped Israel to tighten its siege of Gaza.

But after failing to liquidate the Palestinian resistance in Gaza through 17 years of blockade, several major wars and a 15-month genocide, Israel’s last resort seems to be a repeat of the 1948 ethnic cleansing.

Thwarting Trump’s displacement plan may be the only strategy left for these regimes to stave off their political demise

Although Jordan and Egypt are deeply reliant on US support, they cannot accept Trump’s Gaza displacement plan because it constitutes an existential threat to their regimes.

Up until now, their dependence presented a win-win situation, as both states could align with US interests while publicly pushing for a “just” solution to the Palestinian question.

But with the new US-Israeli push to ethnically cleanse Gaza, Jordan and Egypt must realise that their decades-long servitude to American interests, dressed up as pragmatism for survival, will not protect them from the expansionist Zionist settler-colonial project.

Since Palestinians in Gaza refuse to be expelled, it’s in the best interests of Jordan and Egypt to provide them with logistical and political support. While normalising with Israel and protecting its borders were the costs of staying in power, today, thwarting Trump’s displacement plan may be the only strategy left for these regimes to stave off their political demise.

If Jordan and Egypt work proactively against the displacement of Palestinians, even if such a strategy is self-serving, the US would have to make hard choices as to whether the ramifications of undermining its biggest allies in the region to fulfil the fantasies of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are worth it.

Read more at: MiddleEastEye.net