Contrary to what Donald Trump thinks, removing Palestinians from Gaza will not be an easy task.
The United States president shocked the world when he called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 4, 2025. Trump floated the idea of the United States taking over and redeveloping the Gaza Strip as the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Throughout this process, Palestinians would be relocated to other Arab countries such as Egypt and Jordan with no right of return to Gaza. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz praised Trump’s proposal to forcibly remove Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and called on several European countries to take in displaced Palestinians. On February 6, Katz remarked in front of reporters that “countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have leveled accusations and false claims against Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories.”
Katz’s comments came after he allegedly instructed the Israeli military to draw up plans to remove large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza by land, sea, and air routes. On the other hand, the prospect of another expulsion of the Palestinians did not sit well in Amman, Cairo, and Riyadh.
King Abdullah II of Jordan was firmly opposed to any forced relocation of Palestinians, stressing Jordan’s “steadfast position” against displacement. The speaker of the Jordanian parliament Ahmed Safadi reinforced the rejection of Palestinian displacement, by declaring “no to displacement, no to an alternative homeland.”
Egyptian political leaders were also adamantly opposed to this plan. They argued that the expulsion of Palestinians would destabilize the region and undermine its peace treaty with Israel. In a similar vein, Saudi Arabia categorically rejected Trump’s plan.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry underscored the kingdom’s “firm, unwavering position” on establishing a Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia highlighted that normalizing diplomatic ties with Israel is contingent on the establishment of a two-state solution. The Saudis also poured cold water on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s suggestion of creating a Palestinian state within Saudi territory.
Arab states have a good reason to oppose a Palestinian resettlement scheme, as it’s laden with negative political ramifications. By resettling Palestinians, Arab countries would facilitate the Israeli project of ethnically cleansing Gaza, which could be met with violent retaliation.
For countries like Egypt, admitting up to twp million Palestinians from Gaza could put the country’s already strained economy on the fast track to collapse. Politically, a large influx of Palestinians into Egypt would be a boon for Islamist movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been on the ascent in the last few decades and briefly held power from 2012 to 2013. A disaffected Palestinian population would be fertile recruiting ground for the Muslim Brotherhood to tap into and could even accelerate the prospects of Islamists toppling the current government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Arab countries have had to deal with Palestinians fleeing to their territories and it has not always been pretty. In the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, many Palestinian refugees and guerillas moved to Jordan, ratcheting up tensions with the Jordanian government. By 1970, some Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) factions were calling for the overthrow of King Hussein. In September of that year, King Hussein had enough and ordered the Jordanian military to attack the Palestinian fedayeen fighters operating in the capital of Amman and other cities.
The “Black September” conflict came to an end in July 1971 after the fedayeen were pushed out of Jordanian cities. Many Palestinian fighters fled to Lebanon, where they regrouped and later took part in the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990).
Following the 1990-1991 Gulf War, Kuwait kicked out nearly 400,000 Palestinians as punishment for the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) support of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. All things considered, embittered Palestinian refugees could contain certain militant elements capable of using other Arab countries as bases to conduct attacks against Israel or their Arab hosts for not sufficiently opposing the Jewish state. For many Arab countries constantly concerned about their governing position, absorbing large numbers of Palestinians is too high of a political risk.
Trump’s fantastical plan for Gaza is another expression of Washington’s myopia towards Israeli-Palestinian relations. It avoids the elephant in the living room that is the Palestinian people‘s right to self-determination—a protracted struggle against the Israeli state’s effort to ethnically cleanse and displace Palestinians.
Despite the temporary peace that has emerged from the recent ceasefire, the structural problems of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine and America’s slavish devotion to the Israeli state remain. It doesn’t help that Israel’s ruling class is increasingly motivated with consummating the Old Testament fantasy of building a “Greater Israel”—an expanded Jewish state encompassing territories beyond its current borders.
That said, geopolitics is a harsh enterprise that has no room for wishful thinking and quixotic political projects. With respect to Israel, policymakers in Tel Aviv and Washington DC would be wise to remember the enemy still gets a vote. It’s the height of wishful thinking to assume that forcefully moving Palestinians around the Arab world would not elicit a violent response.
Reducing existential conflicts of self-determination to real estate deals is foolhardy. Should the Trump administration midwife an expulsion of the Palestinians, another regional conflagration could be on the menu for the Middle East.
Instead, a bit of realism and restraint would go a long way in allaying tensions in Israel and occupied Palestine.
