Trump’s Palestinian refugee idea falls flat with Jordan and confounds a Senate ally

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands with U.S. President Donald Trump after signing the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 15, 2020. (REUTERS)
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands with U.S. President Donald Trump after signing the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and some of its Middle East neighbors, in a strategic realignment of Middle Eastern countries against Iran, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, U.S., September 15, 2020. (REUTERS)
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Updated 27 January 2025
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Trump’s Palestinian refugee idea falls flat with Jordan and confounds a Senate ally

Trump’s Palestinian refugee idea falls flat with Jordan and confounds a Senate ally
  • Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War
  • Both Egypt and Jordan also have perpetually struggling economies and their governments, as well as those of other Arab states, fear massive destabilization of their own countries and the region from any such influx of refugees

DORAL, Florida: President Donald Trump’s push to have Egypt and Jordan take in large numbers of Palestinian refugees from besieged Gaza fell flat with those countries’ governments and left a key congressional ally in Washington perplexed on Sunday.
Fighting that broke out in the territory after ruling Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 is paused due to a fragile ceasefire, but much of Gaza’s population has been left largely homeless by an Israeli military campaign. Trump told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One that moving some 1.5 million people away from Gaza might mean that “we just clean out that whole thing.”
Trump relayed what he told Jordan’s King Abdullah when the two held a call earlier Saturday: “I said to him, ‘I’d love for you to take on more because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now, and it’s a mess.’”
He said he was making a similar appeal to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi during a conversation they were having while Trump was at his Doral resort in Florida on Sunday. Trump said he would “like Egypt to take people and I’d like Jordan to take people.”
Egypt and Jordan, along with the Palestinians, worry that Israel would never allow them to return to Gaza once they have left. Both Egypt and Jordan also have perpetually struggling economies and their governments, as well as those of other Arab states, fear massive destabilization of their own countries and the region from any such influx of refugees.
Jordan already is home to more than 2 million Palestinian refugees. Egypt has warned of the security implications of transferring large numbers of Palestinians to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, bordering Gaza.
Trump suggested that resettling most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million could be temporary or long term.
Jordan’s foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, said Sunday that his country’s opposition to what Trump floated was “firm and unwavering.” Some Israel officials had raised the idea early in the war.
Egypt’s foreign minister issued a statement saying that the temporary or long-term transfer of Palestinians “risks expanding the conflict in the region.”
Trump does have leverage to wield over Jordan, which is a debt-strapped, but strategically important, US ally and is heavily dependent on foreign aid. The US is historically the single-largest provider of that aid, including more than $1.6 billion through the State Department in 2023.
Much of that comes as support for Jordan’s security forces and direct budget support.
Jordan in return has been a vital regional partner to the US in trying to help keep the region stable. Jordan hosts some 3,000 US troops. Yet, on Friday, new Secretary of State Marco Rubio exempted security assistance to Israel and Egypt but not to Jordan, when he laid out the details of a freeze on foreign assistance that Trump ordered on his first day in office.
Meantime, in the United States, even Trump loyalists tried to make sense of his words.
“I really don’t know,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, when asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” about what Trump meant by the ”clean out” remark. Graham, who is close to Trump, said the suggestion was not feasible.
“The idea that all the Palestinians are going to leave and go somewhere else, I don’t see that to be overly practical,” said Graham, R-S.C. He said Trump should keep talking to Mideast leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and officials in the United Arab Emirates.
“I don’t know what he’s talking about. But go talk to MBS, go talk to UAE, go talk to Egypt,” Graham said. “What is their plan for the Palestinians? Do they want them all to leave?”
Trump, a staunch supporter of Israel, also announced Saturday that he had directed the US to release a supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. Former President Joe Biden had imposed a hold due to concerns about their effects on Gaza’s civilian population.
Egypt and Jordan have made peace with Israel but support the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. They fear that the permanent displacement of Gaza’s population could make that impossible.
In making his case for such a massive population shift, Trump said Gaza is “literally a demolition site right now.”
“I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location,” he said of people displaced in Gaza. “Where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”
 

 


Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank

Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank
Updated 30 January 2025
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Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank

Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank
  • The strike occurred in the village of Tamun in northern West Bank, organization says
  • Israeli said its forces were involved in a ‘counterterrorism operation’ in the area

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli drone strike in a village in the occupied West Bank killed at least seven people on Wednesday, while the military said it had struck an “armed cell.”
“An Israeli strike in the village of Tamun in the northern West Bank killed seven people,” the group said in a statement.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said eight people had been killed.
The Israeli military told AFP its forces were involved in a “counterterrorism operation” in the area.
As part of the operation, an Israeli “aircraft, with the direction of ISA (security agency) intelligence, struck an armed terrorist cell in the area of Tamun,” the military said in a statement.
Violence has soared throughout the West Bank since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 870 Palestinians, including many militants, in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 29 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.


First Gaza aid ship arrives at Egypt’s El-Arish port since ceasefire

First Gaza aid ship arrives at Egypt’s El-Arish port since ceasefire
Updated 30 January 2025
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First Gaza aid ship arrives at Egypt’s El-Arish port since ceasefire

First Gaza aid ship arrives at Egypt’s El-Arish port since ceasefire

CAIRO: A Turkish ship docked at Egypt’s El-Arish on Wednesday, delivering the first aid destined for Gaza through the port since a fragile ceasefire went into effect, a Turkish official and Egyptian sources said.
“We are prepared to heal the wounds of our Gazan brothers and sisters and to meet their temporary shelter needs,” Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya posted on X on Wednesday.
The ship was loaded with 871 tons of humanitarian aid, including 300 power generators, 20 portable toilets, 10,460 tents and 14,350 blankets, according to Yerlikaya.
A team from the Egyptian Red Crescent received the Turkish aid to make the necessary arrangements for its delivery to the Strip, a source at the port, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the Gaza Strip, said.
Two staff from the Egyptian Red Crescent also confirmed its arrival.
Since the start of the truce in the Palestinian territory, hundreds of truckloads of aid have entered Gaza while some has been airlifted in.
The truce between Israel and Hamas came after more than 15 months of war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.


Syria’s Sharaa: jihadist to interim head of state

Syria’s Sharaa: jihadist to interim head of state
Updated 30 January 2025
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Syria’s Sharaa: jihadist to interim head of state

Syria’s Sharaa: jihadist to interim head of state

DAMASCUS: In less than two months, Syria’s Ahmed Al-Sharaa has risen from rebel leader to interim president, after his Islamist group led a lightning offensive that toppled Bashar Assad.
Sharaa was appointed Wednesday to lead Syria for an unspecified transitional period, and has been tasked with forming an interim legislature after the dissolution of the Assad era parliament and the suspension of the 2012 constitution.
The former jihadist has abandoned his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani, trimmed his beard and donned a suit and tie to receive foreign dignitaries since ousting Assad from power on December 8.
The tall, sharp-eyed Sharaa has held a succession of interviews with foreign journalists, presenting himself as a patriot who wants to rebuild and reunite Syria, devastated and divided after almost 14 years of civil war.
Syria’s new authorities also announced Wednesday the dissolution of armed factions, including Sharaa’s own Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda.
Since breaking ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016, Sharaa has sought to portray himself as a more moderate leader, and HTS has toned down its rhetoric, vowing to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.
But Sharaa has yet to calm misgivings among some analysts and Western governments that still class HTS as a terrorist organization.
“He is a pragmatic radical,” Thomas Pierret, a specialist in political Islam, told AFP.
“In 2014, he was at the height of his radicalism,” Pierret said, referring to the period of the war when he sought to compete with the jihadist Daesh group.
“Since then, he has moderated his rhetoric.”
Born in 1982 in Saudi Arabia, Sharaa is from a well-to-do Syrian family and was raised in Mazzeh, an upscale district of Damascus.
In 2021, he told US broadcaster PBS that his nom de guerre was a reference to his family’s roots in the Golan Heights. He said his grandfather was among those forced to flee the territory after its capture by Israel in 1967.
According to the Middle East Eye news website, it was after the September 11, 2001 attacks that he was first drawn to jihadist thinking.
“It was as a result of this admiration for the 9/11 attackers that the first signs of jihadism began to surface in Jolani’s life, as he began attending secretive sermons and panel discussions in marginalized suburbs of Damascus,” the website said.
Following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he left Syria to take part in the fight.
He joined Al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, and was subsequently detained for five years, preventing him from rising through the ranks of the jihadist organization.
In March 2011, when the revolt against Assad’s rule erupted in Syria, he returned home and founded Al-Nusra Front, Syria’s branch of Al-Qaeda.
In 2013, he refused to swear allegiance to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who would go on to become the emir of the Daesh group, and instead pledged his loyalty to Al-Qaeda’s Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
A realist in his partisans’ eyes, an opportunist to his adversaries, Sharaa said in May 2015 that he, unlike Daesh, had no intention of launching attacks against the West.
He also proclaimed that should Assad be defeated, there would be no revenge attacks against the Alawite minority that the president’s clan stems from.
He cut ties with Al-Qaeda, claiming to do so in order to deprive the West of reasons to attack his organization.
According to Pierret, he has since sought to chart a path toward becoming a credible statesman.
In January 2017, Sharaa imposed a merger with HTS on rival Islamist groups in northwestern Syria, thereby taking control of swathes of Idlib province that had been cleared of government troops.
In areas under its grip, HTS developed a civil administration and established a semblance of a state in Idlib province, while crushing its rebel rivals.
Throughout this process, HTS faced accusations from residents and human rights groups of brutal abuses against those who dared dissent, which the United Nations has classed as war crimes.


Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank

Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank
Updated 30 January 2025
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Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank

Palestinian Red Crescent says Israeli strike kills 7 in West Bank
  • Palestinian Red Crescent: ‘An Israeli strike in the village of Tamun in the northern West Bank killed seven people’
  • Israeli said that its forces were involved in a ‘counterterrorism operation’ in the area

RAMALLAH, Palestinian Territories: The Palestinian Red Crescent said an Israeli drone strike in a village in the occupied West Bank killed at least seven people on Wednesday, while the military said it had struck an “armed cell.”
“An Israeli strike in the village of Tamun in the northern West Bank killed seven people,” the group said in a statement.
The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said eight people had been killed.
The Israeli military told AFP its forces were involved in a “counterterrorism operation” in the area.
As part of the operation, an Israeli “aircraft, with the direction of ISA (security agency) intelligence, struck an armed terrorist cell in the area of Tamun,” the military said in a statement.
Violence has soared throughout the West Bank since the war between Hamas and Israel broke out in Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 870 Palestinians, including many militants, in the West Bank since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
At least 29 Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks or during Israeli military raids in the territory over the same period, according to official Israeli figures.


Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza complicates Netanyahu’s war aims

Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza complicates Netanyahu’s war aims
Updated 30 January 2025
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Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza complicates Netanyahu’s war aims

Palestinians’ return to northern Gaza complicates Netanyahu’s war aims
  • “There is no war to resume,” said Ofer Shelah, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank
  • The “total victory” envisioned by Netanyahu remains elusive

TEL AVIV: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed 15 months ago that Israel would achieve “total victory” in the war in Gaza — by eradicating Hamas and freeing all the hostages. One week into a ceasefire with the militant group, many Israelis are dubious.
Not only is Hamas still intact, there’s also no guarantee all of the hostages will be released. But what’s really raised doubts about Netanyahu’s ability to deliver on his promise is this week’s return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza. That makes it difficult for Israel to relaunch its war against Hamas should the two sides fail to extend the ceasefire beyond its initial six-week phase.
“There is no war to resume,” said Ofer Shelah, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, a Tel Aviv think tank. “What will we do now? Move the population south again?”
“There is no total victory in this war,” he said.
‘Total victory’ is elusive
Israel launched its war against Hamas after the militant group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and roughly 250 were taken hostage. Within hours, Israel began a devastating air assault on Gaza, and weeks later it launched a ground invasion.
Israel has inflicted heavy losses on Hamas. It has killed most of its top leadership, and claims to have killed thousands of fighters while dismantling tunnels and weapons factories. Months of bombardment and urban warfare have left Gaza in ruins, and more than 47,000 Palestinians are dead, according to local health authorities who don’t distinguish between militants and civilians in their count.
But the “total victory” envisioned by Netanyahu remains elusive.
In the first phase of the ceasefire, 33 hostages in Gaza will be freed, nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel will be released, and humanitarian aid to Gaza will be vastly increased. Israel is also redeploying troops to enable over 1 million Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza.
In the second phase of the ceasefire, which the two sides are expected to begin negotiating next week, more hostages would be released and the stage would be set for a more lasting truce.
But if Israel and Hamas do not agree to advance to the next phase, more than half of the roughly 90 remaining hostages will still be in Gaza; at least a third of them are believed to be dead.
Despite heavy international and domestic pressure to develop a postwar vision for who should rule Gaza, Netanyahu has yet to secure an alternative to the militant group. That has left Hamas in command.
Hamas sought to solidify that impression as soon as the ceasefire began. It quickly deployed uniformed police to patrol the streets and staged elaborate events for the hostages’ release, replete with masked gunmen, large crowds and ceremonies. Masked militants have also been seen along Gaza’s main thoroughfares, waving to and welcoming Palestinians as they head back home.
A Hamas victory?
Despite the scale of death and destruction in Gaza — and the hit to its own ranks — Hamas will likely claim victory.
Hamas will say, “Israel didn’t achieve its goals and didn’t defeat us, so we won,” said Michael Milshtein, an Israeli expert on Palestinian affairs.
The return of displaced Palestinians to northern Gaza is an important achievement for Hamas, Milshtein said. The group long insisted on a withdrawal of Israeli troops and an end to war as part of any deal — two conditions that have effectively begun to be realized.
And Hamas can now reassert itself in a swath of the territory that Israel battled over yet struggled to entirely control.
To enable Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, Israel opened the Netzarim corridor, a roughly 4-mile (6-kilometer) military zone bisecting the territory. That gives Hamas more freedom to operate, while taking away leverage that would be difficult for Israel regain even if it restarted the war, said Giora Eiland, a former Israeli general who had proposed a surrender-or-starve strategy for northern Gaza.
“We are at the mercy of Hamas,” he said in an interview with Israeli Army Radio. “The war has ended very badly” for Israel, he said, whereas Hamas “has largely achieved everything it wanted.”
Little appetite to resume war
President Donald Trump could play an important role in determining the remaining course of the war.
He has strongly hinted that he wants the sides to continue to the second phase of negotiations and shown little enthusiasm for resuming the war. A visit by his Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Israel this week and a visit to the White House next week by Netanyahu will likely give stronger indications of where things are headed.
In announcing the ceasefire, Netanyahu said Israel was still intent on achieving all the war’s goals. He said Israel was “safeguarding the ability to return and fight as needed.”
While military experts say Israel could in practice relaunch the war, doing so will be complicated.
Beyond the return of displaced Palestinians, the international legitimacy to wage war that it had right after Hamas’ attack has vanished. And with joyful scenes of freed hostages reuniting with their families, the Israeli public’s appetite for a resumption of fighting is also on the decline, even if many are disappointed that Hamas, a group that committed the deadliest attack against Israelis in the country’s history, is still standing.
An end to the war complicates Netanyahu’s political horizon. The Israeli leader is under intense pressure to resume the war from his far-right political allies, who want to see Hamas crushed. They envision new Jewish settlements in Gaza and long-term Israeli rule there.
One of Netanyahu’s coalition partners already resigned in protest at the ceasefire deal and a second key ally has threatened to topple the government if the war doesn’t resume after the first phase. That would destabilize the government and could trigger early elections.
“Where is the total victory that this government promised?” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former Cabinet minister who quit the government over the ceasefire said Monday.
Israel Ziv, a retired general, said restarting the war would require a new set of goals and that its motivations would be tainted.
“The war we entered into is over,” he told Israeli Army Radio. “Other than political reasons, I don’t see any reason to resume the war.”