President Donald Trump’s plan to move Palestinians in Gaza to neighboring countries has drawn sharp criticism, with opponents condemning it as ethnic cleansing.
After Trump first proposed to “clean out” Gaza last week, experts warned that beyond the moral and legal concerns, an influx of refugees into neighboring Arab countries could destabilize them.
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, told CNN last week.
What is the Nakba? In 1948, 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.
For Jordan, which is already home to millions of Palestinians, an altered demographic “would threaten the Hashemite monarchy’s hold on power,” Alhasan 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.
Jordan and Egypt’s influence in Washington, DC, has been overshadowed by Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates over time, according to Jane Kinninmont, an expert on conflict at the European Leadership Network. What remains to be seen, she said, is how far those countries will go in “sending a clear message to Washington that mass displacement won’t make the conflict go away.”
Egypt and Jordan already host a sizeable number of refugees.
Both countries may also have security concerns if their territories become staging grounds for attacks on Israel, which could further strain their peace treaties with Israel, Alhasan said.
