In the latest, US President Donald Trump has given invitation to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House for a meeting on February 4, the Israeli leader’s office announced. The statement read, “Prime Minister Netanyahu is the first foreign leader to be invited to the White House during President Trump’s second term”. The meeting comes amid a six-week ceasefire that has brought a temporary pause to 15 months of fighting between Israel and militant group Hamas in Gaza.
Trump had also said that he wants Egypt to take in Palestinians from Gaza, where much of the population has been displaced by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack. “I wish he would take some. We help them a lot, and I’m sure he can help us,” Trump said of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom he called a “friend.”
Trump said of Palestinians in Gaza, “I’d like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence”. Trump’s comments come following he floated at the weekend the idea that Egypt and Jordan, which border Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to the south and east, respectively, should take in Palestinians from Gaza because “almost everything is demolished and people are dying there.”
The new U.S. president said he made the request in a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Saturday.
Jordan is home to several million Palestinians, while tens of thousands live in Egypt. Both the countries pushed back over the weekend following Trump said they should take in Palestinians from Gaza, where Israel’s military assault has caused a humanitarian crisis and killed tens of thousands.
The suggestion was also rejected by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that runs Gaza, and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who exercises limited self-rule in some areas of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Egypt, Jordan and other Arab countries oppose removing Palestinians from Gaza, in part because it is land that Palestinians want as part of a future Palestinian state.
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