Donald Trump has doubled down on US plans to take over Gaza in a meeting with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House.
The meeting came the day after the president said he would withhold aid to Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries if they refused to take in people forcibly displaced from Gaza.
King Abdullah’s “steadfast position” – as he laid out on X after the news conference – was “against the displacement of Palestinians.”
He said Jordan, which is already home to millions of Palestinians, will take in 2,000 children who have cancer or are otherwise unwell.
But on taking in more Gazans, he stressed a solution that was “good for everybody” – including Americans, the “people in the region” and Jordanians – was his priority.
However, the King sat quietly as Mr Trump reiterated his plans to displace two million Palestinians, which he said was a “very small number of people”.
Mr Trump also said he believes there will be “parcels of land” in Jordan, Egypt and “someplace else” where Palestinians will live “happily and very safely”.
“They only want to be in the Gaza Strip because they don’t know anything else, they’ve never had an alternative,” Mr Trump said.
“They are being killed there at levels that nobody has ever seen – no place in the world is as dangerous as the Gaza Strip.”
He claims – contrary to what Gazans have said – that “not one person” wants to stay in Gaza.
Asked to respond to the widespread view among experts in international law that his plan amounts to ethnic cleansing, Mr Trump said: “We are moving them to a beautiful location.”
However, Trump appeared to ease off his previous threat to withdraw aid to countries that refused to take in people from Gaza.
“Well, I don’t want to say that… we don’t have to threaten that, I do believe we’re above that,” he said.
In the same news conference, Mr Trump said the US won’t buy Gaza, it will simply “have it”.
“We don’t have to buy, there’s nothing to buy,” he said.
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“It’s a war-torn area, we’re going to hold it, we’re going to take it… Gaza the way it is, civilisation has been wiped out in Gaza. It’s going to be a great economic development.”
He declined to answer how that would work – and how he can avoid spending US taxes running it.
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“We’re going to run it very properly and eventually we’ll have economic development at a very large scale”, he said, promising “peace in the Middle East”.
“With the United States in control of that piece of land… you’re going to have stability in the Middle East for the first time.
“The Palestinians, the people who live now in Gaza, will be living beautifully in another location.
“They are going to be living safely – they’re not going to be killed, murdered and having to leave every 10 years.”
Trump added that he is 99% sure he will work out a deal with Egypt.
