Jordan’s King Abdullah II has become the first Arab leader to meet Donald Trump in the White House since the United States president’s second term began on January 20.
Tuesday’s sit-down with Trump, however, put Abdullah in a delicate situation.
While Jordan and the US have historically had strong ties, Trump has repeatedly pressured Abdullah and his government to accept displaced Palestinians from war-torn Gaza, where Israel has conducted a military assault since October 2023.
The US, meanwhile, has said it would “take over” and “own” a Gaza emptied of its residents, a proposal critics said would amount to ethnic cleansing.
“It’s not a complex thing to do,” Trump said again on Tuesday. “With the United States being in control of that piece of land — that fairly large piece of land — you’re going to have stability in the Middle East for the first time.”
Both Jordan and its ally Egypt have refused to accept forcibly displaced Palestinians.
Abdullah’s meeting came as a recent ceasefire in Gaza risks unravelling. Israel has threatened — on the back of remarks from Trump himself — to restart bombing on Saturday if the Palestinian group Hamas does not release all captives by Saturday.
But Abdullah avoided directly contradicting Trump during their meeting, alluding instead to a future plan from Egypt.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the meeting between Abdullah and Trump.
Trump doubles down on Gaza takeover plan (again)
Inside the Oval Office, journalists asked Trump about his comments that the US would take over Gaza and that the Palestinians living there would be moved elsewhere, with no right of return.
He was direct in his responses, seemingly deaf to the incredulous nature of some of the questions. Yes, the US would take control of Gaza and rebuild it. Yes, the Palestinians who have been living there for generations — many of them already refugees from what is now Israel — would move to “parcels of land” in Jordan and Egypt.
“We’re going to take it. We’re going to hold it. We’re going to cherish it. We’re going to get it going eventually where a lot of jobs are going to be created for the people in the Middle East,” Trump said, without giving specifics.
Trump also doubled down on his threats that the ceasefire with Israel would end if Hamas’s leaders do not release the remaining Israeli captives held in the enclave over the next four days.
“I don’t think they’re going to make the deadline, personally,” Trump said. “They want to play tough guy. We’ll see how tough they are.”
He added that he would not accept a slower timeline: “They either have them out by Saturday at 12 o’clock or all bets are off.”
Trump had announced that deadline a day earlier, in seemingly off-the-cuff comments with reporters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since echoed Trump’s threats, warning that his military — which has already killed more than 61,700 Palestinians since 2023 — would recommence its bombing campaign in Gaza if the Israeli captives were not released.
One issue Trump did seem to back down on, at least in front of Abdullah and the cameras, was his threat that aid could be withheld from Jordan and Egypt if they do not agree to his Gaza displacement plan.
“I don’t have to threaten that,” Trump said. “I do believe we’re above that.”
Abdullah diplomatic, but says Arab states have own plan for Gaza
In meeting with Trump, the Jordanian monarch was confronting a difficult task: How was he going to reiterate his country’s opposition to Trump’s Gaza plan without offending a president not known for his tolerance for dissent?
In the end, Abdullah chose to avoid speaking too much in front of the media, and when he did, his language was careful, precise and designed to avoid offence.
When asked whether Jordan would take in Palestinians displaced from Gaza, the Jordanian leader said he would do what was “best” for his country.
In social media posts after the meeting, he said that Jordan was “steadfast” in its “position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank”.
He added that Arab states would come up with their own plan for Gaza, which would be presented after it was finalised. He also flattered Trump, saying: “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.”
After the meeting, Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also said that there is an Arab plan to rebuild Gaza without displacing its people.
Some observers believe that Trump’s Gaza plan is a negotiating tactic and that Arab states will be able to come up with a counteroffer.
Trump focuses on real estate, not Palestinian attachment to land
The US president, of course, has his roots in the real estate business.
Much of Trump’s money comes from the real estate empire he inherited from his father, and he has since leveraged his family name to license eponymous products, as well as host a reality TV show.
Some of those real estate leanings, however, bled into the language he has used when describing his Gaza plan on Tuesday.
“I’ve had a great career in real estate,” Trump said nostalgically. “When you’ve done what I’ve done, you can just do more good for people when you’re president.”
Trump described Gaza as potentially becoming a “diamond” in the Middle East. However, when asked on Tuesday if he would consider purchasing Gaza as part of his takeover plan, Trump was dismissive.
“We’re not going to buy. There’s nothing to buy,” Trump said. “We will have Gaza. No reason to buy. It’s Gaza. It’s a war-torn area.”
Critics say his vision for Gaza — redeveloped with hotels, offices and a “riviera” atmosphere — seems divorced from the politics of the region. Palestinians have long withstood pressures to force them from their remaining land, despite decades of continued Israeli occupation.
On Tuesday, Trump once again emphasised that Palestinians would not want to stay in Gaza, seemingly ignoring their attachment to their land.
That nationalism was most recently seen when hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians used the ceasefire to return to northern Gaza, even if most of their homes had been destroyed by Israel. The majority of them made the journey on foot.
Their message was a simple one: that they were not going to leave again.
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