Jordan treads lightly with Trump, hoping to avoid mass displacement of Palestinians 

AMMAN — It’s late Tuesday evening and Bilal, 10, is falling asleep on a stretcher in an ambulance taking him to hospital in Amman. His left eye was severely injured last year by Israeli shrapnel and Jordan is offering treatment. Bilal has been up since 5 a.m. on this momentous day in his young life.

“He hasn’t been able to see for more than nine months and we hope he can have surgery,” said Bilal’s father, Mohamed Adnan al Hamwassi, riding with his son. 

Bilal is one of dozens of stricken children that Jordan began evacuating from Gaza this week in a bid to forestall a plan by United States President Donald Trump to displace millions of Palestinians from the besieged Gaza Strip to neighboring countries. 

The medical convoy bearing Bilal and some 30 children, along with 44 relatives, arrived in Jordan from Gaza on March 3 in cooperation with the World Health Organization. On the same day, the leaders of Arab countries met in Egypt to agree an alternative to a widely condemned plan, announced by Trump, to empty Gaza of its inhabitants and turn the enclave into a “Middle East Riviera.”

Humanitarian outreach

UNICEF, the United Nations’ agency for children, estimates that 25,000 children in Gaza have been injured in the 15-month war, based on information gathered with Gaza’s Health Ministry. Few have access to adequate medical treatment, given that 80 percent of Gaza’s health infrastructure has been destroyed by Israeli bombing, according to the WHO. 

Jordan has led hundreds of humanitarian operations in Gaza since the start of Israel’s war on the enclave following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. But the latest undertaking is different — it’s part of an attempt by Amman to build good will and dissuade Trump from displacing millions of Palestinians by doubling down on its efforts to help Gaza residents after 15 months of war.

“Jordan’s humanitarian role has probably managed to diffuse American tension and pressure,” said Hassan Al Momani, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. 

At the King Hussein border between Jordan and Israel on Tuesday, Brig. Gen. and army spokesperson Mustafa Al-Hayari said the medical convoy followed “a royal directive” by King Abdullah II, who in a Feb. 11 White House meeting with Trump had announced that Jordan was “ready to receive 2,000 children to complete their treatment in the kingdom.”

Trump described the move during the meeting as “a beautiful gesture.”

King Abdullah II also joined other Arab leaders on March 4 to support an Egyptian plan to spend $53 billion (€49.6 billion) to rebuild Gaza by 2030 and to set up a new transitional government to replace Hamas. 

Three weeks after the White House meeting, the first helicopters and ambulances left Gaza to cross Israel and the West Bank into Jordan after being delayed for a few days amid a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The children and their escorts will stay for the duration of their treatment before being sent home, according to Jordanian authorities. 

Avoiding a greater danger

Since taking office in January, the U.S. president has repeatedly floated a plan, supported by the Israeli right, to forcibly move millions of Palestinians from Gaza to Jordan and Egypt, in violation of international law. Both countries fear the initiative could destabilize them internally. 

Jordan is on particularly high alert. Authorities fear that any new transfer of Palestinians to their territory, where more than half of the population is Palestinian or of Palestinian descent, would prompt serious unrest. They worry it would not only upset the country’s delicate demographic balance, but also effectively mark the end of a two-state solution, fueling anger across the country. Jordan also regards illegal population displacement as a red line in its peace treaty with Israel.

“The strategy Jordan is following is not to confront Trump publicly in any way, because that’s not going to achieve results, but to explain to him and to the administration the dangers of any mass transfer of Palestinians out of Gaza and into Jordan or Egypt,” said Marwan Muasher, Jordan’s former foreign minister and now vice president of studies for the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.

Jordan also has many “friends” across U.S. institutions “whom it relies on, at least to contain [these] unexpected, unpredictable movements of a bull in a china shop,” said Oraib Al Rantawi, director general of the Al Quds Center for Political Studies. 

It’s unclear if Jordan’s efforts alongside other Arab countries to thwart Trump’s Gaza plan will succeed. The Trump administration rejected the Arab proposal on March 4 as unworkable and has cut 90 percent of contracts through its USAID aid agency. It’s not clear what impact this will have on Jordan’s yearly $1.4 billion (€1.3 billion) aid package.    

Analysts said that while Trump is unlikely to follow through on the mass transfer of Gaza Palestinians to Jordan, Amman ought to strengthen international alliances and bilateral relations with regional heavyweights such as Saudi Arabia. Only by recruiting regional support and carefully engaging with Trump could Jordan avoid a far greater threat to the country: That Washington might use its Gaza proposal as a template for other Palestinian populations.

Trump’s Gaza plan “is not realistic, but the question for Jordan is not Gaza, frankly, it’s the West Bank,” Muasher said.  

Trump has not yet officially taken a position on the West Bank in his second mandate. In light of his first peace plan for Israel and Palestine in 2020, Muasher said it wasn’t “unlikely” that Washington would back attempts by the Israeli government to significantly expand its illegal annexation of the West Bank. 

Israel deployed tanks to the occupied West Bank on Feb. 24 for the first time in two decades amid intensified military operations that have displaced at least 40,000 Palestinians from their homes, according to the U.N. 

“That’s what Jordan is worried about: That any mass transfer of Palestinians from Gaza might set a precedent for what might happen in the West Bank,” Muasher said.