Trump Is Bullying Jordan and Egypt to Help in Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza. It Isn’t Working.

President Donald Trump doubled down on his plans to forcibly remove the 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza, though he walked back from his threat to withhold billions in aid to Egypt and Jordan unless they assisted.

Sitting next to Jordanian King Abdullah II at a White House press conference, Trump said he was above" threatening U.S. allies in order to facilitate his idea of expelling all Palestinians from Gaza. He also promised that taking over Gaza would come at no cost to Americans.

There's nothing to buy. We will have Gaza. No reason to buy. There is nothing to buy, it's Gaza, it's a war-torn area, we're going to take it, we're going to hold it, we're going to cherish it," Trump said.

For days, Trump has been repeating his vision of a Gaza free of Palestinians and placed under American control.

The Arab world has rejected the idea - especially the countries that Trump has singled out as potential hosts for the transplanted Palestinian population: Egypt and Jordan.

In the face of that resistance, Trump floated the idea of yanking the billions of dollars in military assistance and foreign aid sends to Egypt and Jordan, long viewed as the price the U.S. must pay to maintain those countries' peace agreements with Israel.

The U.S. has sent Egypt billions in military aid since the signing of its 1979 peace treaty with Israel in the wake of the Camp David Accords. It currently sends Egypt $1.5 billion per year, mostly in the form of military aid.

I don't have to threaten with money."

Jordan's 1994 peace treaty with Israel is likewise undergirded by $1.7 billion in annual U.S. assistance.

Trump said Tuesday that he was no longer threatening to withhold aid.

I don't have to threaten with money," said Trump at a press conference. We do contribute a lot of money to Jordan and to Egypt, by the way, a lot to both. But I don't have to threaten that. I think we're above that."

Though he adopted a more conciliatory tone in his meeting with Abdullah, Trump continued to dig in his heels over the mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.

I think it's going to be something that's going to be magnificent for the Palestinians," he said. They're going to be in love with it. I did very well with real estate. I can tell you about real estate. They're going to be in love."

The Jordanian king did not directly push back against that idea during the press conference, but said later on social media that he had rejected it during his meeting with Trump.

I reiterated Jordan's steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This is the unified Arab position," he said on X.

Experts on the region said it was no surprise why Trump had backed off his idea of withholding aid: There was no way that the rulers in Egypt and Jordan would choose to risk a revolt.

It will not be the end of the world for these countries if American aid is limited or suspended or ended. It will be the end of the world for these countries, though, if they participate in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians," said Yousef Munayyer, a Palestinian American political analyst.

Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said it was a deal neither country can afford to make.

For Egypt, argued Friedman, moving Palestinians into effectively concentration camps" along the Sinai, would open them up to military conflict from Israel. There is inevitably going to be residual recidivist military action by Palestinians against Israel, which is going to lead to war between Israel and Egypt," she said.

There's also the broad domestic support for the Palestinian cause in Jordan - already home to the world's largest population of Palestinian refugees - as well as Egypt.

For Jordan, the idea of de-populating Gaza and potentially asking Jordan to take more Palestinians is an existential threat for the Jordanian regime," said Friedman. From an Egyptian perspective, politically, national security-wise, I don't know how anyone imagines that Egypt can give in on this and not see itself massively destabilized."

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For these reasons, Trump's fever dreams of a Riviera of the Middle East" are not poised to come to fruition soon, said British Israeli analyst Daniel Levy, the president of the U.S./Middle East Project. But he warned that the president's loose talk still posed a danger to the region.

Levy pointed to an Israeli military intelligence warning that discussing the plan could stir up further violence, as well as the heated Saudi response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's off-the-cuff suggestion in a TV interview that the kingdom should host a Palestinian state.

What new fronts might this open up? I've never seen the kinds of exchanges that have taken place in the last few days between Israel and Saudi. I think these are unprecedented, the barbs being hurled," Levy said.

Though Trump appeared to back down on his idea of withholding aid, Levy warned that he has essentially let the genie out of the bottle by normalizing the idea of ethnic cleansing as a solution.

When you get into a zero-sum space, and when the zero-sum thing being posited is ethnic cleansing ... it's a really stupidly dangerous place to go. Don't assume that your zero-sum is going to carry the day," he said.

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