By Suleiman Al-Khalidi
AMMAN (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Jordan is a recipe for radicalism that will spread chaos through the Middle East, jeopardize the Kingdom’s peace with Israel and even threaten the country’s very survival.
These are the stark warnings Jordan’s King Abdullah plans to deliver to Trump when he meets the U.S. President in Washington on February 11 as part of a diplomatic offensive against any relocation, according to three senior Jordanian officials, all of whom declined to be identified.
“This is existential. There is very strong public opposition, and it’s not something Jordan can entertain. This is not an economic or a security issue for Jordan, it’s an identity issue,” said Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister who helped negotiate Jordan’s 1994 peace treaty with Israel.
One of the senior officials said there had been a flurry of phone calls by King Abdullah to muster support from regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar.
“This is the biggest test in ties with our strategic ally,” the Jordanian official said.
“The President looks forward to having a robust discussion with His Majesty King Abdullah on ways we can collaborate to make the Middle East more peaceful,” said Brian Hughes, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council.
Asked for comment, a senior Jordanian government official said the Kingdom’s position was clearly outlined in recent statements by the King opposing mass displacement.
For Jordan, Trump’s talk of resettling some 2 million Gazans comes dangerously close to its nightmare of a mass expulsion of Palestinians from both Gaza and the West Bank – echoing a vision long propagated by right-wing Israelis of Jordan as an alternative Palestinian home.
Jordan’s concern is being amplified by a surge in violence on its border with the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Palestinian hopes of statehood are being rapidly eroded by expanding Jewish settlement.
Amman fears any relocation from Gaza would then set the stage for the expulsion of another 3 million Palestinians from the West Bank, the officials said.
While Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous state, is also deeply worried by Trump’s idea, it is even more critical for much smaller Jordan, which absorbed more Palestinians than any other state after Israel’s creation in 1948.
By some estimates, more than half of its population of 11 million are Palestinian.
Muasher, who became Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel following the 1994 treaty, said the Kingdom’s main justification for making peace with its neighbour was to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in Jordan, but “today that official argument is being seriously questioned, not by ordinary people, but by the establishment itself”.
Jordan has been a close Western ally since independence from Britain in 1946 and hosts U.S. forces under a treaty allowing them to deploy at Jordanian bases. Bordering Israel, Jordan has shielded itself from wars that have raged in neighbouring Iraq and Syria over the last two decades.
‘WE ARE PREPARED’
Jordan is preparing for worst-case scenarios.
Contingency plans drawn up by the army and security establishment range from declaring a state of war with Israel, to abrogating the peace treaty to declaring a state of emergency, officials told Reuters.
“We hope we won’t see thousands of Palestinians streaming across the border trying to enter the Kingdom but we are prepared,” one of the Jordanian officials said.
Asked for comment on the contingency plans, the senior government official said: “Jordan will always be ready to do whatever it needs to protect its national security.”
King Abdullah, whose Hashemite dynasty originally hail from the Arabian peninsula and descend from the Prophet Mohammad, on Wednesday said he rejected any attempts to annex land and displace Palestinians.
While Trump’s pro-Israeli approach to the Middle East conflict during his first term sent tremors through Jordan, the officials say they have been taken aback by his unprecedented statements suggesting a mass transfer of Gazans to Jordan.
Trump expanded further on his vision on Monday when he announced a plan for the United States to take over Gaza after resettling Palestinians elsewhere, and turning it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”.
At a White House briefing on Wednesday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt walked back Trump’s earlier assertion that Gazans needed to be permanently resettled in neighbouring countries, saying instead that they should be “temporarily relocated” for the rebuilding process.
Trump’s vision shatters decades of U.S. policy built on the two-state solution which envisions a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank alongside Israel and has broad global support.
Speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said on Tuesday that King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi would come around to his idea.
“I have a feeling that … (they) will open their hearts and will give us the kind of land that we need to get this done and people can live in harmony and in peace,” Trump said.
King Abdullah aims to convince Trump his plan is not viable and will lobby politicians on Capitol Hill with whom Jordan has close ties, officials familiar with his agenda said.
“(He) has to be very careful not to get on Trump’s bad side”, said Joost Hiltermann of the Crisis Group think-tank.
“I don’t think they can do much to change his mind, but frankly the whole idea is unimplementable,” he said, adding that a massive Palestinian influx would spell the end of the Kingdom.
PRO-HAMAS SLOGANS
Trump has also alluded to the significant U.S. support both Egypt and Jordan receive, saying last week: “We do a lot for them, and they’re gonna do it”.
Jordan gets about $1.45 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance a year, making it a top U.S. aid recipient.
The Kingdom is bracing for the risk of U.S. economic support being withheld, something it can ill-afford at a time when the country is still adjusting to the end of generous financial support once provided by Gulf Arab allies that has dried up over the past decade.
Jordan is already feeling the effects of the Trump administration’s global aid freeze. But one of the officials said economic pressure would not make Jordan change its mind, so grave are the dangers of accepting millions of Palestinians.
Anticipating the risk of reduced U.S. aid, King Abdullah has been urging other allies to expand their support, an official said, noting a January 29 partnership agreement with the European Union worth 3 billion euros ($3.1 billion) to Jordan over the next two years.
And in an apparent political message to the United States, Jordan has also loosened restrictions on protests by an Islamist opposition party, the anti-American Islamic Action Front, an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood and ideological ally of Hamas.
Pro-Hamas slogans were chanted and pictures of slain Hamas leaders were held aloft during a recent protest. “Mr Trump: Jordan has sovereignty and is not a commodity,” Murad Adailah, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, told protesters.
Lamis Andoni, a leading expert on Jordanian-Palestinian affairs, said the King would have to put his foot down regardless of U.S. pressure, or risk Jordan’s destruction: “There is no escape for King Abdullah except to insist on rejecting Trump’s plans.”
($1 = 0.9649 euros)
(Additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut and Steve Holland in Washington; Editing by Tom Perry and David Clarke)
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