Trump Escalates Move to Relocate Gazans to Egypt, Jordan: ‘They Will Do It’

Photo Credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

President Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff at Hostage square in Tel Aviv, January 30, 2025.

President Donald J. Trump insisted on Thursday that Egypt and Jordan would accept displaced Gazans, despite both Arab nations rejecting his plan to relocate Gazans from the war-torn Strip.

Egypt, Jordan, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority have all rejected President Trump’s idea of relocating the Arabs of the Gaza Strip to countries where the density is less than 6,500 persons per square kilometer.

Trump’s comments came a day after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II rejected any forced displacement of Gazans following the war between Hamas and Israel.

“They will do it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the Egyptian and Jordanian rejection, and whether he would consider imposing tariffs on either country to pressure them.

“They’re going to do it. We do a lot for them, and they’re going to do it.”

The 22 nations of the Arab League stated on Monday that the proposal would only serve to prolong the Israeli-Arab conflict. Officials from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia are in talks for an emergency meeting for all the Arab states to publicly oppose Trump’s proposal and exert pressure on him to reconsider his position, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the discussions.

ALBANIA, INDONESIA, AND THE COLOMBIA MODEL

On Monday, News12 reporter Amit Segal suggested that while President Trump’s for relocating the Gaza multitudes to Jordan and Egypt could seriously destabilize both countries, there were other options, such as Indonesia, and Albania.

Segal also suggested that if the Albanians would object to hosting 100 thousand Gaza Arabs on their soil, Trump would do to them what he did to Colombia the other day, imposing tariffs on their coffee for refusing to take in planeloads of illegal migrants from the US. The Colombians cried Uncle.

In practice, the chances of implementation of any of the migration destinations appear slim, and Trump’s bargaining power on immigration plans for the Middle East is not comparable to what he can force on his Latin American neighbors.

Trump is channeling his inward real estate developer when he’s looking at Gaza: to rehabilitate a devastated neighborhood, not much bigger or different any in other way from the burning South Bronx of the 1970s, an evacuation and reconstruction project is required: the residents will be evacuated to temporary housing until the construction is completed.

This idea meets the long-standing hope of the Israeli right, to wind back the clock to July 2005, before the Gush Katif expulsion and the Hamas takeover that followed less than a year later. However, both Trump’s real estate dream and Daniela Weiss’ back-to-Gaza aspiration will encounter the ethos of the Arab “resistance,” shared by 22 Arab countries.

At the moment, no Arab ruler would support Trump’s proposal for immigration from the Gaza Strip and live to collect his Nobel Peace Prize.

DID TRUMP’S DISK CHANGE?

The Trump administration’s bold plan is to relocate some residents of the Gaza Strip to other countries during the region’s reconstruction. The idea of helping Gazans relocate has been firmly rejected during the Biden administration, and any suggestion that Gaza Arabs might fare better abroad than in their bombed neighborhoods was dismissed as extremist.

Steve Witkoff, the President’s Middle East envoy, has visited the war-torn Gaza Strip, presumably as part of his efforts to help ensure that the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas remains intact and to reach a deal with Hamas et al on finding better places for the people of Gaza.

For decades, the US has advocated for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, Judea, and Samaria, to exist alongside Israel. Trump also proposed a similar plan during his first term.

However, the 15-month-long war in Gaza seems to be upending long-standing US strategies for resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict. The war has displaced much of Gaza’s population inside the Strip, left much of the enclave in ruins, and raised uncertainties about its future governance and reconstruction.

As he works to shape his Middle East agenda and end the war, Trump stated over the weekend that he wants to “clean out” the enclave and urged Jordan and Egypt to take in refugees, either temporarily or long-term.

MORE ON ALBANIA

A 2023 census revealed that Albania’s population stands at 2,402,113, which is a huge decline from the 2,821,977 recorded in 2011. Key factors driving this demographic shift include declining fertility rates and increased emigration, both of which contribute to ongoing population challenges.

Projections suggest that Albania’s population will continue to shrink over the next decade, depending on migration trends and fertility rates. Currently, the country’s population density is 83.6 inhabitants per square kilometer.

The population density in the Gaza Strip is 6,024 per square kilometer.

In other words, Albania could compensate for its 10-year loss of 400,000 inhabitants with eager Gaza migrants and Gaza would still remain an incredibly dense place.