US President Donald Trump’s proposal to “clean out” the Gaza Strip by moving more than a million Palestinians to neighboring countries has drawn sharp criticism, with opponents condemning it as ethnic cleansing and warning of regional chaos.
Trump said on Saturday that he would like Jordan and Egypt to take in Gazans internally displaced by Israel’s devastating war in the enclave. “You’re talking about a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
The potential transfer, he said, “could be temporary” or “could be long-term.” Both countries swiftly rejected the idea.
But, if adopted, the proposal would mark a sharp break from the Biden administration’s stance that Gaza should not be depopulated and could signal a shift from a longstanding US position that Gaza should be part of a future Palestinian state. It would also align the Trump administration with Israel’s most radical far-right politicians, who advocate transferring Palestinians out of the territory to make way for Jewish settlement.
Trump’s proposal has been embraced by extremist Israeli politicians, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich – who has sparked controversy by claiming there is “no such thing as a Palestinian people”– and former Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir, who was once convicted for supporting terrorism and inciting anti-Arab racism.
Palestinian politicians decried it as a plan to ethnically cleanse Gazans from their land.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Graham said, referring to Trump.
Experts warn that beyond the moral and legal concerns, an influx of refugees into neighboring Arab countries could destabilize them and pose an existential threat. Agreeing to Trump’s proposal, they say, would provoke widespread public anger – an untenable risk for those governments.
‘A second Palestinian Nakba’
Both the Egyptian and Jordanian governments “would be met by sweeping domestic opposition if they were seen by their publics as being complacent with a second Palestinian Nakba,” said Hasan Alhasan, senior fellow for Middle East policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain, referring to 1948, when roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly expelled from their homes in historic Palestine, during the creation of Israel.
Israel has barred them and their descendants from returning, leaving millions of refugees in neighboring countries without citizenship or prospects for permanent resettlement.
“Given that the Palestinians of Gaza are highly unlikely to leave voluntarily, a forced displacement towards Egypt or Jordan would pose a variety of existential threats to these two countries,” Alhasan said.
For Jordan, which is already home to millions of Palestinians, an altered demographic “would threaten the Hashemite monarchy’s hold on power,” he said, adding that financially, “neither Egypt nor Jordan can afford to host millions of additional refugees.”
Egypt and Jordan are two of the US’ closest allies in the Middle East, and major recipients of US aid that have for decades aligned their regional policies with US interests. They were the first Arab countries to sign peace treaties with Israel and have maintained cordial relations with it, including security coordination, despite widespread public discontent.
Jane Kinninmont, an expert on conflict at the European Leadership Network, a think tank, and co-host of the Disorder podcast, said that over time, Jordan and Egypt’s influence in Washington, DC has been overshadowed by Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. What remains to be seen, she added, is how far those countries will go in “sending a clear message to Washington that mass displacement won’t make the conflict go away.”
“It is important for regional countries to emphasize that the refugee issue is one of the drivers of the current conflict and making more Palestinians into refugees won’t solve that. This goes right to the heart of the conflict,” Kinninmont said.
Security concerns
On Sunday, both Egypt and Jordan reaffirmed their rejection to the deportation or resettlement of Palestinians.
“Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians,” said Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi in a news conference in Amman Sunday. “Our rejection for the deportation is steadfast and unchanging.”
Egypt’s foreign ministry also said it rejects “the deportation or encouragement of the transfer or removal of Palestinians from their land.”
Throughout the war, Jordan and Egypt have brushed off domestic calls to sever ties with Israel, and Egypt has played a key mediation role between Israel and Hamas.
In October 2023, protests erupted in both countries in support of Palestinians in Gaza, with many showing disgruntlement with their governments’ cooperation with Israel given the high human toll Israel’s war had taken.
Kaldas, of the Tahrir Institute, said that accepting a Palestinian population transfer would be more costly for the two countries than losing the American aid both countries rely on.
Egypt and Jordan already host a sizeable number of refugees.
As of January, there were 877,000 refugees and asylum-seekers registered in Egypt, according to the UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. In May, the Palestinian ambassador in Cairo, Diab al-Louh, has said as many as 100,000 Gazans had crossed into Egypt since the war began, according to Reuters.
In Jordan, more than 2.39 million Palestine refugees are registered with UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, the agency said.
Both countries may also have security concerns if their territories become staging grounds for attacks on Israel, said Alhasan. That could further strain their peace treaties with Israel, he said.
“By seeking to depopulate Gaza of its Palestinian inhabitants, Trump… is doing the bidding of Israel’s extreme right-wing fanatics,” Alhasan said.
“Ironically, Trump’s proposal, if it were to materialize, would in fact be self-defeating,” he said. Destabilizing Egypt and Jordan would “favor Islamist political forces, notably the Muslim Brotherhood,” and these would “prove far less friendly to the US and more sympathetic to Hamas.”