The U.S. president said he would consider using aid to Jordan and Egypt as leverage to make them take part in the war crime of ethnically cleansing Gaza, reports Joe Lauria.
King Abdullah II of Jordan, left, and President Donald J. Trump, in 2017. (White House, Shealah Craighead)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
As King Abdullah II of Jordan prepares to visit the White House on Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters he could withhold aid to both Jordan and Egypt if their leaders don’t agree to accept the nearly 2 million Palestinians that Trump wants expelled from Gaza.
“Yeah, maybe, sure, why not? If they don’t, I would conceivably withhold aid, yes,” Trump said.
Jordan is the third biggest recipient of combined military and economic U.S. foreign aid ($1.7 billion) and Egypt is the fourth ($1.5 billion). Only Ukraine ($17.2 billion/2 percent military) and Israel ($3.3 billion) were ahead of them.
Thus Trump holds leverage over both Amman and Cairo. And it looks like he might not be afraid to use it. Despite a week of outrage, derision and disbelief that followed Trump’s revelation that he wanted to transfer all Palestinians from Gaza, he seems more determined than ever to do it.
Asked in a TV interview that aired on Monday if the Palestinians could return after he supposedly rebuilds Gaza, Trump said bluntly: “No, they wouldn’t.”
“We’ll build safe communities a little bit away from where they are where all of this danger is,” the real estate magnate said. “In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land.”
Once his real estate deal is complete the Palestinians won’t return. Notice he said “I” would own Gaza, not the United States.
What Distraction?
President Donald Trump greets Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, 2017 (White House/Shealah Craighead)
Despite days of this very clear language, pundit after pundit, one social media pontificator after another say Trump is just trying to artfully shock people for an ulterior motive, or that it’s all just a distraction. But a distraction from what? If there is anything he’d want to distract people from it would be the commission of one of the most heinous war crimes: the ethnic cleansing of an entire population.
But instead Trump announced his intention to do it live, a week ago under the full glare of TV lights in the East Room of the White House with an overjoyed Israeli prime minister at his side. He wants to put it right in our faces. It’s no distraction. He speaks as though he is doing the Palestinians a favor.
Perhaps it’s time to understand that he might just be meaning what he says. King Abdullah is about to find out at the White House on Tuesday when he sits down with Trump in the Oval Office.
Abdullah’s reign is on the line. If he says no to Trump, he could be flushing $1.7 billion a year. That’s nearly 4 percent of Jordan’s $50.8 billion GDP. But only roughly 25 percent of that is military aid, about $429 million.
If he says yes, there will be upheaval in Jordan, a nation already made up by a majority of Palestinian refugees and their descendants. Taking in Palestinians from Gaza could open the way for an even greater influx from the West Bank if the extremists in Tel Aviv begin their ethnic cleansing there.
Analysts say Abdullah acquiescing to ethnic cleansing and increasing the population of Palestinian refugees is a combination that could topple him. It’s likely Abdullah will say no to Trump.
The calculation for Egypt could be different. Of the $1.5 billion in U.S. aid, $1.2 billion funds the military. Without U.S. assistance, the Egyptian military could draw near to collapse, despite the many business ventures it is involved in.
It’s an amount Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi could not afford to lose. But he would have to take in the majority of the Gazan refugees, given the proximity. The streets of downtown Cairo would go wild in protests likely rivaling those that brought down Hosni Mubarak.
There is no easy way out for Sisi. He could suggest to Trump that Egypt would turn to Russia and China to replace U.S. aid, if he can get it.
Of course the part Trump doesn’t dwell on now is how is he going to take over Gaza with Hamas still in power? Israel failed to defeat it after 15 months. But all indications are that the fighting is soon to resume, after Hamas paused the hostage handovers because of what it says are Israeli ceasefire violations.
The bellicose rhetoric is rising. Trump has warned Hamas that if it does not release all the remaining Israeli hostages by “12 o’clock on Saturday,” the cease-fire is over. “All hell is going to break out,” he said.
In Trump’s mind the Israelis will provide the muscle, the Gulf the financing, Egypt and Jordan the land and he will own it all.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @unjoe.
Saudi Arabia has always subsidised el-Sisi much more than the US has and there is every reason to believe the trump/mbs affair is well over & done. Given Saudi’s most recent sledging of trump’s grand plan for Gaza, I’d say that the Saudis plus the gulf states will make sure al-Sisi and Abdullah are covered.
However much the el-Sauds wanted control of the third holy spot of Al Aqsa before Palestinians recommenced demanding justice, they don’t want it now because with trump in power it is only a matter of time before Al Aqsa becomes as hot as the human genocide. So there is no reason Saudi & Jordan can’t get along once more either.
NYT: No More Blank Checks: Saudi Arabia Clamps Down on Regional Aid
hxxps://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/02/world/middleeast/no-more-blank-checks-saudi-arabia-clamps-down-on-regional-aid.html
The U.S. aid would have to be replaced if it is cut off.
I note that the NYT article (FWIW as 3LA involvement is all over it) dates back to april 2023 prior to China persuading Iran & Saudi to kiss and make up. Much has changed in the kingdom since then, not least of all Saudi is less obedient to US bullying. The neoliberal demands Saudi was told to make in relation to Egypt are no longer a priority; Saudi leadership is much more concerned with regional security and an unstable Egypt such as what would happen if 2 million angry Palestinians were thrust into it, is precisely the type of regional insecurity that the Saudis most want to avoid.
This doesn’t seem to be a good sign to me. I wonder if this is the Saudis’ Yang to Trumps Ying?
Hamas outlines widespread Israeli ceasefire violations in document obtained by Drop Site (Jeremy Scahill) – hxxps://www.dropsitenews.com/p/hamas-report-israeli-ceasefire-violations-gaza-netanyahu
I like to think that finally any notion that Trump is something other than what he’s always been (an amoral, unprincipled criminal plutocrat and swinder) will finally be laid to rest by people who should know better.
People change. Like from a poseur to fully megalomaniac.
Thanks to Joe Lauria for having the courage and good principles to state the truth.
Careless Trump weakens a wrongful US empire, and may unify Arab states & BRICS against zionist aggression.
KSA/OPEC/BRICS could tax oil to the US to cover support & reconstruction or other demands.
The US Ukraine war weakened Russia in the Mideast, for Israeli genocide, but BRICS/OPEC can act together.
Otherwise perhaps a new Arab Spring brings the fall of the US puppet regimes.
Great piece by Lauria here.
Shameless BLACKMAILER…:-(
The following is entirely fictional sarcasm.
While on an extended leave of absence from his position as founding director of the exclusive fat cats-only World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab told big shot corporate reporters via phone from the French Riviera that he enthusiastically supported Donald Trump’s proposal to ethnically cleanse approximately two million Palestinian people out of Israel. Schwab said, “I must admit being somewhat envious for not being first to envision and publicly announce the proposal, before Mr. Trump. This makes the resolution to the Israel-Palestine issue a matter almost as simple as taking out the garbage on the scheduled weekday.”
Klaus Schwab’s Vice President of Criminally Insane Science at the WEF, Yuval Noah Harari, also living in seclusion in the French Riviera, mirrored Mr. Schwab’s enthusiasm for President Donald Trump’s unusual resolution to, in Harari’s words: “the longstanding problem”. As his boss Klaus Schwab nodded in approval while sitting next to Harari at the table inside their favorite fancy-schmancy French Riviera restaurant, Harari offered another, even more audacious and unusual suggestion to President Donald Trump.
Harari told the big shot reporters, and by extension the world, that, “I would like to see Donald Trump direct Elon Musk to arrange for the ethnic cleansing of two billion people from Earth to Mars. “Such an action would eliminate the tiresome effort needed to reach our goal of depopulating the human race by some billions, plus simultaneously bypassing the somewhat underhanded task of hacking those billions of hackable animals”, Harari told the big shot reporters, and added, “Klaus’ taking out the garbage analogy is really right on the money and applicable with respect to my Mars proposal.”
Great stuff Jerry. And I though I had a ‘dark mind’.
I watched the interview a few minutes ago when trump and King Abdulla II. I watched it while cooking some sausage.
The entire production was laughable, IMHO. The pic here reminds me of Mutt & Jeff or a ventriloquist and his over sized dummy!