President Donald Trump sounded a defiant and confident tone on Thursday after the leaders of Egypt and Jordan stated they would not accept and resettle Palestinian refugees from Gaza.
Earlier in the day, reports said the Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the Egyptian government supports “the Palestinian people’s insistence to remain on their land, defending their legitimate rights and respecting international law.” Voice of America reports that Egyptian public opinion is strongly against taking in refugees from the war-torn region.
The ministry also promised to reject “any infringement upon those inalienable rights, whether through settlement activities, annexation of land, or the eviction of the rightful owners through displacement or encouraging the transfer or uprooting of Palestinians from their land, whether temporarily or permanently.”
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi recently told a group of military officers that relocating Palestinians to the Sinai would be feasible, but the challenge would be gaining acceptance for such an idea among the Egyptian population, VOA reported.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also rejected Trump’s proposal, saying that “Palestine is for the Palestinians and Jordan is for the Jordanians and that the solution to the Palestinian problem is located on Palestinian soil and embodied by a Palestinian state.”
But during a question-and-answer session with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump waved off those statements when a reporter asked him about the situation.
“Mr. President, Egypt’s president and the King of Jordan have both said that they won’t take in displaced people from Gaza like you suggested. Is there anything you can do to make them do that? I mean, tariffs against those countries, for example?” the reporter asked.
“They will do it,” Trump said before pausing. “They will do it.”
“What makes you say that?” the reporter followed up.
“They’re going to do it, OK? We do a lot for them, and they’re going to do it,” the president said.
