WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has embarked on a diplomatic stretch that could make or break his idea that the United States would “own” Gaza and displace millions of Palestinians as some congressional Democrats contend his proposal is a mere domestic distraction tool.

As the U.S. leader continues revising his Gaza plan nearly every time he speaks publicly, he met privately Tuesday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and is slated to host Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi at the White House next week. He has contended that both countries would eventually cut deals under which they would accept displaced Gazans, something both leaders have rejected.

Trump also has put the two U.S. allies in a strategically fraught position, with both eager to prevent unrest at home. At issue for both countries is congressionally approved American aid. Asked Monday about turning off those spigots unless Abdullah and el-Sissi back his idea, Trump responded: “Yeah, maybe, sure why not? If they don’t, I would conceivably withhold aid, yes.” However, with Abdullah by his side a day later, the president said of withholding aid: “I think we’re above that.”

Arab leaders have shown signs of trying to buy time and not offend Trump, with Abdullah saying Tuesday that Saudi Arabia would soon host Middle East leaders to discuss how to make the situation work for all involved — historically, a monumental task.

After the meeting with Trump, Abdullah posted on social media that Arab nations are staunchly opposed to the U.S. proposal.

“I reiterated Jordan’s steadfast position against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank,” he wrote on X. “This is the unified Arab position. Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all.”

The king’s position contrasted sharply with Trump’s statements just a day earlier.

“We’ve spoken to a lot of Palestinians. They would love to leave Gaza if they could find a place to be,” Trump told reporters Monday evening, without naming anyone or explaining how displaced Palestinians would earn incomes. “And I’ve spoken to various leaders of various countries in the not-so-distant area from where we’re talking about, the Gaza Strip. And I think they were very positive about providing land.”

A White House National Security Council spokesperson had not responded as of press time to a request for more information about to whom Trump might have spoken.

“And if we could build a nice place for people to live safely, everybody in Gaza would do it. They’ve been persecuted,” Trump said Monday. “They’ve been spit on. They’ve been treated like trash. And they would love to get out of Gaza, but until now, they never had an alternative. Now they have an alternative.”

Trump on Tuesday, appearing with Abdullah, portrayed a redeveloped Gaza as a jobs-creator — not for Palestinians, but the entire region. “We’re going to get it going eventually, where a lot of jobs are going to be created for the people in the Middle East. It’s going to be for the people in the Middle East,” he said. “But I think it could be a diamond.” Some Palestinians would “maybe” work there, he added.

Yet, some Palestinians in Gaza have vowed to resist any relocation efforts — even mocking the American president, according to regional media reports.

In a Tuesday statement about a call with the Danish prime minister, el-Sissi’s office said the duo “underscored the imperative to begin the reconstruction of Gaza to make it livable again, without displacing its Palestinian population, safeguarding their rights and ability to live on their land.”

“The phone call reaffirmed the importance of establishing an independent Palestinian State along the June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, affirming that this is the only guarantee for achieving lasting peace, stability, and the desired economic prosperity,” the statement read.

‘Huge pressure’

That sets up a showdown with Trump over the matter when they meet in Washington next week, especially since Abdullah on Tuesday, seated beside Trump in the Oval Office, said any final decisions should be put off until Egyptian officials have a chance to present their ideas. He did, however, offer to take up to 2,000 sick Gazan children.

“Egypt is eager to avoid open confrontation with the United States, which has the capacity to exert huge pressure on Cairo to accede, principally through economic and financial means,” Rawan Maayeh, a senior analyst for Oxford Analytica, wrote Monday. (Oxford Analytica is owned by CQ Roll Call’s parent company, FiscalNote.)

“The costs of accepting Trump’s plan, in security and domestic political terms, would be very high and long-lasting; the potential costs of refusal would be acute and financial,” Maayeh said. “Egypt’s best hope lies in other actors tempering Trump’s demands.”

Since Trump’s victory last fall, some congressional Democrats have employed a more-muted approach to Trump 2.0, saying they did not intend to react to his every order and utterance with the same kind of shock and outrage as they did during his first term.

Yet, in recent weeks, some Democratic lawmakers have tried a new tactic: explaining to whoever might be listening that Trump’s daily flurry of executive orders, threats to friends and foes, and heavy focus on culture war issues are very much on purpose — and part of a strategy of disorientation.

“What the president talked about would make our country less safe. An invasion of U.S. troops into Gaza would not make Americans more safe,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California told reporters last week. “It would make Americans a target. … I’m going to just take a wild guess that the president’s plans include hotels and resorts and casinos. Like, that’s just who he is. But it is not … a thoughtful strategy.”

Trump has given no indication he intends to ask lawmakers to sign off on or allocate any federal funds for what would be a massive project to clean up and totally rebuild Gaza. The stunning takeover plan and any permanent relocation of so many Palestinians could also alter the Middle East and even spawn new conflicts.

One leading Trump critic, New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told reporters last week that the president’s idea was “the definition of ethnic cleansing” and “part of the culmination of what I view to be genocide of the Palestinian people.”

‘Campaign of distraction’

Congressional Democrats have suggested it does not matter how serious Trump might be about turning Gaza into an American-owned playground of hotels and casinos, with Mediterranean Sea views. Their take: The idea is simply too unthinkable to become reality.

“We’re not going to invade and occupy Gaza. We’re not going to invade Greenland. We’re not taking back the Panama Canal,” Connecticut Sen. Christopher S. Murphy told MSNBC last week, referring to some of the president’s more extreme foreign policy ideas. “But Donald Trump is really good at this campaign of distraction.”

Murphy pointed to the public outrage and pushback earlier this month to reports of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team accessing government systems that contain Americans’ personal information.

“The impact is to try to distract Americans from the real story. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are trying to seize control of the government so they can punish their enemies and reward their friends, try to squash dissent, and gobble up a bunch of money to be able to pass another tax cut for their billionaire and corporate friends,” the Democratic senator added.

“He wants to change the conversation. And how does he do that? By making a ridiculous promise that the United States is going to invade, occupy, clear out and rebuild Gaza, something that not a single Middle East leader will support, something … that would lead to decades of war in the Middle East and thousands of Americans being killed,” Murphy said.

Even more so than during his first term, Trump has appeared more adept at driving media coverage during his early weeks back in office.

“He’s not going to do it, but he knows that he can turn the conversation to something that’s better for him,” Murphy said, “than the billionaire power grab inside our government that’s happening right now.”

But one Middle East analyst suggested the distraction can only last so long.

“International pressure and U.S. leverage can do a lot — more than America often realizes. It cannot, however, make countries forgo what they see as their core national interests,” Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle Policy at the Brookings Institution, wrote on Feb. 7.

“In Trump’s vision, the American public … would have to agree to run Gaza. This is not something most Americans expected to have to do,” he added. “Lindsey Graham, a key Republican senator, especially on foreign affairs, has noted that his own South Carolina constituents may be less than enthusiastic to do so. If America embarked on the effort, it may find that this entails far more than a real estate development project.”

_____

©2025 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.