Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority have rejected U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal over the weekend to resettle residents of the Gaza Strip in Egypt or Jordan.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that the Egyptian government supports "the Palestinian people's insistence to remain on their land, defending their legitimate rights and respecting international law."
Egyptian public opinion remains firmly opposed to the resettlement of Palestinians on Egyptian territory.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi recently told a crowd of military officers that it would be easy to resettle some Palestinians in the Sinai, but the difficulty would be getting anyone in Egypt to accept the idea.
Khattar Abou Diab, who teaches political science at the University of Paris, told VOA that despite the difficult economic situation in Egypt and the fact that there could be a significant economic windfall in accepting Trump's proposal to resettle some Palestinians in the country, a large segment of the Egyptian public would refuse to do so.
Paul Sullivan, a former professor at the American University of Cairo and fellow at the Atlantic Council, agreed, telling VOA that such a proposal is unacceptable to Egyptians.
"No Egyptian leader who wants to stay in power would agree to such a request," he said. "It would destabilize Egypt and likely lead to greater regional instability."
Jordan's Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also rejected Trump's proposal, saying that "Palestine is for the Palestinians and Jordan is for the Jordanians and that the solution to the Palestinian problem is located on Palestinian soil and embodied by a Palestinian state."
