BY ZEKE MILLER, CHRIS MEGERIAN AND WILL WEISSERT
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump hosted Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday and renewed his insistence that Gaza could somehow be emptied of all residents, controlled by the U.S. and redeveloped as a tourist area.
It’s an audacious, but highly unlikely, scheme to dramatically remake the Middle East and would require Jordan and other Arab nations to accept more refugees from Gaza — something Abdullah reiterated after their meeting that he opposes.
The pair met in the Oval Office with Secretary of State Marco Rubio also on hand. The president suggested he wouldn’t withhold U.S. aid to Jordan or Egypt if they don’t agree to dramatically increase the number of people from Gaza they take in.
“I don’t have to threaten that. I do believe we’re above that,” Trump said. That contradicted the Republican president previously suggesting that holding back aid from Washington was a possibility.
Abdullah was asked repeatedly about Trump’s plan to clear out Gaza and overhaul it as a resort on the Mediterranean Sea — but didn’t make substantive comments on it while also not committing to the idea that his country could accept large numbers of new refugees from Gaza.
[Continue reading below]He did say, however, that Jordan would be willing “right away” to take as many as 2,000 children in Gaza who are suffering from cancer or otherwise ill.
“I finally see somebody that can take us across the finish line to bring stability, peace and prosperity to all of us in the region,” the king said of Trump in his statement at the top of the meeting.
Abdullah left the White House after about two hours and was headed to Capitol Hill to meet with a bipartisan group of lawmakers. He posted on X that 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. Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all,” Abdullah wrote.
“We’re not going to buy anything. We’re going to have it,” Trump said of U.S. control in Gaza. He suggested that the redeveloped area could have new hotels, office buildings and houses, “and we’ll make it exciting.”
“I can tell you about real estate. They’re going to be in love with it,” Trump, who built a New York real estate empire that catapulted him to fame, said of Gaza’s residents, while also insisting that he personally would not be involved in development.
Trump has previously suggested that Gaza’s residents could be displaced temporarily or permanently, an idea that leaders around the Arab world have sharply rebuked.
Additionally, Trump renewed his suggestions that a tenuous ceasefire between Hamas and Israel could be canceled if Hamas doesn’t release all of the remaining hostages it is holding by midday on Saturday. Trump first made that suggestion on Monday, though he insisted then that the ultimate decision lies with Israel.
The king’s visit came at a perilous moment for the ongoing ceasefire in Gaza. Hamas is accusing Israel of violating the truce and says it will delay future releases of hostages captured in its Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
In a statement, Hamas called Trump’s Tuesday comments “racist” and “a call for ethnic cleansing.” It also accused the president of seeking to “liquidate the Palestinian cause and deny the national rights of the Palestinian people.”
Trump has repeatedly proposed the U.S. take control of Gaza and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East,” with Palestinians in the war-torn territory pushed into neighboring nations with no right of return.
Jordan is home to more than 2 million Palestinians. Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said last week that his country’s opposition to Trump’s idea about displacing Gaza’s residents was “firm and unwavering.”
Besides concerns about jeopardizing the long-held goals of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Egypt and Jordan have privately raised security concerns about welcoming large numbers of additional refugees into their countries even temporarily.
The president initially didn’t rule out deploying U.S. troops to help secure Gaza but at the same time insisted no U.S. funds would go to pay for the reconstruction of the territory, raising fundamental questions about the nature of his plan.
After Trump’s initial comments, Rubio and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that Trump only wanted Palestinians relocated from Gaza “temporarily” and sought an “interim” period to allow for debris removal, the disposal of unexploded ordnance and reconstruction.
But asked in an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier that aired Monday if Palestinians in Gaza would have a right to return to the territory under his plan, he replied, “No, they wouldn’t.”
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