One week after President Donald Trump shocked the world and announced that the United States should “own” Gaza, the president has a high-stakes White House meeting with King Abdullah II bin al Hussein of Jordan, a crucial American ally in the Middle East, as the Israel–Hamas war risks reescalating.
Jordan has denounced Trump’s proposal to approach Gaza as a real estate project, developing it into what the president described as the “Riviera of the Middle East” and permanently relocating Palestinians to countries such as Abdullah’s kingdom. But as Trump reneges on foreign funding agreements around the world, the president could put pressure on his royal counterpart.
Center for Strategic and International Studies Middle East program senior fellow Natasha Hall predicted Trump’s meeting with Abdullah on Tuesday will not only be “tense” but “probably one of the most awkward meetings between longtime allies in recent memory.”
“Trump’s rhetoric alone about Gaza is an existential threat to Jordan’s stability,” Hall told the Washington Examiner. “If President Trump walks back some of his statements or if he pushes full-throttle ahead I think will tell us a lot about how the meeting went, but I do suspect that at least those in advisory roles for President Trump may attempt to get the president to walk back his statements.”
The U.S.-Jordan relationship has become increasingly important to American foreign policy as the two countries seek to empower political centrists and counter sectarian conflict and terrorist threats in the Middle East amid unrest in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, according to a 2024 Congressional Research Services report.
To that end, Jordan has received more than $31 billion in U.S. foreign aid since relations were first forged in 1949. Under President Joe Biden, the State Department even signed a new deal in 2022 to give Jordan $1.45 billion per year through 2029.
In exchange, and as Jordan contends with its own refugee crisis and economic constraints, the country consents to hosting 3,000 U.S. military personnel and provides intelligence and diplomatic support. For example, Jordan helped Israel last spring when it was being attacked by Iran.
Abdullah met with Trump at the White House twice during Trump’s first term, but Tuesday’s meeting comes at a critical time for Middle East peace and after domestic politics was upended by the Israel-Hamas war.
After Trump pitched Gaza becoming the “world’s people” last week alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a joint press conference, the president has repeated his desire to permanently move Palestinians.
“We’ll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” Trump told Fox News host Bret Baier on Sunday before Super Bowl LIX. “In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent.”
“Would the Palestinians have the right to return?” Baier asked.
“No, they wouldn’t, because they’re going to have much better housing,” the president said. “I think I could make a deal with Jordan. I think I could make a deal with Egypt. You know, we give them billions and billions of dollars a year.”
Trump’s idea has been condemned by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar as Egypt and Qatar play pivotal roles in the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage negotiations. Jordan has traditionally been a mediator with Hamas as well.
Republicans and Democrats have downplayed the likelihood of the U.S. essentially occupying Gaza as the White House remains adamant that American taxpayers will not pay for the enclave’s reconstruction.
American Enterprise Institute foreign and defense senior fellow Danielle Pletka’s advice to Trump was “caveat emptor,” or buyer beware.
“It’s a ruin, not just because of the war, but because Hamas has systematically destroyed any vestige of modernity, tolerance, growth, or ability to live with others,” Pletka told the Washington Examiner. “It’d take a lot to tempt me into a condo in Gaza.”
The Trump-Abdullah meeting coincides with escalating tensions regarding the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage deal after Hamas announced on Monday that a hostage release scheduled for Saturday will be delayed “until further notice.”
During an executive order signing ceremony at the White House on Monday, Trump warned Hamas “all hell is going to break out” if the hostages are not released “by Saturday at 12 o’clock.”
“If they’re not returned — all of them, not in drips and drabs, not two and one and three and four and two — by Saturday at 12 o’clock, and after that, I would say, all hell is going to break out,” he told reporters. “Hamas will find out what I mean.”
Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had criticized the postponement as a “complete violation of the ceasefire” and told Israel Defense Forces to prepare for “any possible scenario” in Gaza. In response, Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, accused Israel of preventing the return of northern Gaza residents and the entry of relief supplies.
The Israel-Hamas ceasefire and first hostage releases were negotiated under Biden as part of phase one of a peace arrangement, with discussions concerning the second phase starting last week.
Trump’s Gaza proposal has had domestic political repercussions too after Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris were scrutinized for their Middle East policies. Pro-Palestinian protesters, for instance, decried Biden as “Genocide Joe” and Harris lost Michigan‘s Arab-majority city of Dearborn to Trump by more than 2,500 votes, the first time a Republican has won it in two decades.
Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s Michigan chapter and a member of the Imams Council of Michigan, “personally” has “no regrets” over not voting for Harris last year.
“President Biden also floated the idea of displacing Gazans in tent camps in the Sinai, and Egypt declined,” Walid told the Washington Examiner. “There’s a cessation of the bloodbath now.”
But Sameh Elhady, vice chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party’s Arab American caucus, was disappointed with the likes of Walid despite earlier in the election cycle similarly considering not casting a ballot for Harris.
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“I knew that he will be a great supporter for the occupation, and I am feeling pain that it’s happening after some community members supported him and believed him as he promised to end the war,” Elhady told the Washington Examiner. “There is some protest projects in the planning stage, and we will see.”
Abdullah arrived in Washington on Sunday for a meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before his sit-downs on Tuesday with Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, the president’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, according to the Jordanian Embassy in Washington, D.C.
