Trump’s Palestinian refugee idea falls flat with Arab allies and confounds a Republican senator

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One as he travels from Las Vegas to Miami on Saturday, Jan. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

DORAL, Fla. — President Donald Trump’s push to have Egypt and Jordan take in large numbers of Palestinian refugees from besieged Gaza fell flat with those countries' governments and left a key congressional ally in Washington perplexed on Sunday.

Fighting that broke out in the territory after ruling Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 is paused due to a fragile ceasefire, but much of Gaza’s population has been left largely homeless by an Israeli military campaign. Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One that moving some 1.5 million people away from Gaza might mean that “we just clean out that whole thing.”

Trump relayed what he told Jordan’s King Abdullah when the two held a call earlier Saturday: “I said to him, ‘I’d love for you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess.’”

He said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi during a conversation they were having while Trump was at his Doral resort in Florida on Sunday. Trump said he would “like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people.”

Egypt and Jordan, along with the Palestinians, worry that Israel would never allow them to return to Gaza once they have left. Both Egypt and Jordan also have perpetually struggling economies and their governments, as well as those of other Arab states, fear massive destabilization of their own countries and the region from any such influx of refugees.

Jordan already is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees. Egypt has warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.

Trump suggested that resettling most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million could be temporary or long term.

Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that his country’s opposition to what Trump floated was “firm and unwavering.” Some Israel officials had raised the idea early in the war.

Egypt’s foreign minister issued a statement saying that the temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians “risks expanding the conflict in the region.”

Trump does have leverage to wield over Jordan, which is a debt-strapped, but strategically important, U.S. ally and is heavily dependent on foreign aid. The U.S. is historically the single-largest provider of that aid, including more than $1.6 billion through the State Department in 2023.

Much of that comes as support for Jordan’s security forces and direct budget support.

Jordan in return has been a vital regional partner to the U.S. in trying to help keep the region stable. Jordan hosts some 3,000 U.S. troops. Yet, on Friday, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio exempted security assistance to Israel and Egypt but not to Jordan, when he laid out the details of a freeze on foreign assistance that Trump ordered on his first day in office.

Meantime, in the United States, even Trump loyalists tried to make sense of his words.

“I really don’t know,‘’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” about what Trump meant by the “clean out” remark. Graham, who is close to Trump, said the suggestion was not feasible.

“The idea that all the Palestinians are going to leave and go somewhere else, I don’t see that to be overly practical,” said Graham, R-S.C. He said Trump should keep talking to Mideast leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and officials in the United Arab Emirates.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about. But go talk to MBS, go talk to UAE, go talk to Egypt,” Graham said. “What is their plan for the Palestinians? Do they want them all to leave?”

Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, also announced Saturday that he had directed the U.S. to release a supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Former President Joe Biden had imposed a hold due to concerns about their effects on Gaza’s civilian population.

Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population could make that impossible.

In making his case for such a massive population shift, Trump said Gaza is “literally a demolition site right now.”

“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location,” he said of people displaced in Gaza. ”Where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

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Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.

Will Weissert, The Associated Press