AMMAN, Jordan — President Donald Trump’s proposal to remove all Palestinians from Gaza and send them to nearby countries has stoked widespread anger in this small Arab monarchy, a longtime U.S. ally that is already home to millions of Palestinian refugees — and where experts say a new influx of displaced would destabilize the country.
Trump has said Egypt and Jordan should take in more Palestinians, describing the Gaza Strip as unlivable after 15 months of war. He announced last week that the United States would “take over” the territory and turn it into the “Riviera” of the Middle East. But Jordan, whose leader King Abdullah II will meet the president in Washington on Tuesday, has long made its position clear: The displacement of Palestinians to the Hashemite kingdom is a red line.
The push by Trump has turbocharged a reckoning over Jordan’s reliance on U.S. aid and revived existential questions about the country’s identity and political future, at a time of simmering popular dissatisfaction with the king. Jordan is highly dependent on both U.S. military and economic assistance, the latter of which is transferred directly to the state to prop up its budget — and Trump has suggested he could use the nearly $1.5 billion in U.S. aid Jordan receives annually as leverage to force Amman to comply with his Gaza proposal.
If the United States cut aid to Jordan permanently, it would have “dire consequences for the economy and human security,” said Dima Toukan, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute. However, if the king were to compromise and accept Trump’s proposal, he risks energizing the growing opposition to his rule. In recent days, opposition figures from across the political spectrum have suggested Jordan turn instead to China, Russia and wealthy Arab states for financial support and strategic alliances.
Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994, and has since become a pillar of efforts by the West, Israel and Sunni Arab states to counter Iran’s growing influence in the region. Last April, Jordan helped to shoot down a barrage of Iranian missiles aimed at Israel — an action for which the king drew considerable domestic criticism.
Jordanians have taken to the streets throughout the war, calling on the government to abandon its diplomatic agreements with Israel and to do more to help Palestinians in Gaza, where nearly 2 million people, or 90 percent of the population, have been displaced. In Amman on Friday, hundreds of men, women and children turned out on a cold, wet afternoon to protest Trump’s proposal and voice their support for the monarchy’s stance against it.
“We are here to support Jordan, to support Palestine, and to stand against the criminal Trump, who should be held accountable, and against the criminal [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, who should also face justice,” said Ziad, 60, who asked that only his first name be used out of fear of reprisal. “If the official and popular Jordanian stance is united, Netanyahu’s and Trump’s plans will not succeed.”
But there was also dissent: Islamist lawmaker Yanal Freihat took the microphone at a protest downtown and issued a warning to Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi. “We will support you when you are in line with us, but if you think to behave and speak differently, we will not support you anymore,” he said.
Freihat’s party, the Islamic Action Front, rode a wave of public discontent to a stunning electoral triumph in September, winning 22 percent of seats in Jordan’s parliament to become the largest bloc.
“You must believe in our people,” Freihat added, addressing Jordanian officials more broadly. “And stop making America God.”
More than 2 million Palestinian refugees are officially registered with the United Nations in Jordan — about a fifth of the total population. But the actual proportion of Palestinians is estimated to be much higher, probably surpassing 50 percent, according to Jillian Schwedler, a professor of political science at the City University of New York’s Hunter College.
Most of the refugees descend from the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s creation in 1948. Another wave of displaced Palestinians arrived from the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 war in which Israel seized control of the territories from Jordan and Egypt, respectively.
Jordan gave citizenship to most Palestinian refugees who arrived in 1948 as well as those who came later from the West Bank. Intermarriage and integration over the decades gave rise to a blended identity among people of Palestinian origin, who see themselves as part of Jordanian society but maintain strong ties to their Palestinian roots.
But even as the kingdom folded Palestinians into its citizenry, their growing population and cultural cachet has long been viewed as a threat to the Hashemite monarchy and its base of tribes indigenous to the east bank of the Jordan River. The memory of Black September — a civil conflict in 1970 in which Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, crushed an effort by Palestinian militants to overthrow the monarchy — looms large.
“If Palestinians were to constitute a majority, their political influence would naturally grow, leading to demands for greater representation in parliament, the military and the public sector,” said Mohammed Bani Salameh, a professor of political science at Jordan’s Yarmouk University. That could “destabilize the country’s power structure,” he said.
Jordanian officials have reiterated their support for a Palestinian state and said their opposition to Trump’s proposal is based in part on making sure Palestinians hold on to their territory.
“The Palestinian people refuse this idea,” said Hassan Suleiman, 41, a salesman at a perfume store in the Jabal Hussein neighborhood, who comes from an Indigenous Jordanian family. “Who are we to take them out of their land?”
But an influx of refugees would also strain Jordan’s economy, which has struggled to rebound from the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and regional conflicts, analysts said. Youth unemployment stood at 46 percent in 2023. Jordan is also the one of the most water-scarce countries in the world.
“I love Gazans, and of course we would open our homes to them” if they were forced to flee to Jordan, said Nourhan Tariq Fakr al-Din, 47, who works at an Amman clothing store and whose parents came from Jerusalem and Nablus, an important commercial center in the West Bank.
But after absorbing hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees over the past decade, she said, “we can’t take anyone anymore if we want the economy to be better.”
If history is any guide, Palestinians from Gaza would almost certainly encounter a chilly reception from the state. In a valley north of Amman, picturesque olive groves give way to the crowded alleys of Jerash refugee camp — the most impoverished of Jordan’s 10 official refugee camps and a testament to the discrimination Gazan refugees have faced.
Started as a collection of tents for Palestinians who fled Gaza after the 1967 war, Jerash has grown into densely populated neighborhoods of cinder-block houses. It’s home to more than 35,000 refugees, according to the United Nations, the vast majority of whom have not been allowed to acquire citizenship, limiting their ability to own land and access health care, public education and jobs.
Life in the camp is difficult, residents and volunteers there said. Money is tight. Schools run by UNRWA, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, are overcrowded, and many children drop out. It’s complicated and expensive for these refugees to obtain work permits, and Jordanian authorities have cracked down on employers who hire people under the table.
Iman, 26, graduated from university and trained to be a teacher. But without a work permit, she has been unemployed for years, she said, speaking on the condition that only her first name be used to discuss a sensitive topic.
Iman grew up on tales of Gaza — “the sea, the oranges, the fish” — and said she has spent her entire life feeling that her presence in Jordan is “temporary.” She lacks basic rights here, she said, and her family of eight must share three bedrooms, prohibited from expanding their house beyond the parcel of land originally allotted to them decades ago.
Residents in the camp have stayed in touch with relatives in Gaza. Many lost family members in the current war with Israel and heard from survivors about the devastation and dire conditions in the enclave.
Still, residents of Jerash camp said that even if Gazans wanted to leave, they would urge them not to come to Jordan.
“People over here will tell them: Don’t repeat the same mistake,” Iman said.
But if push comes to shove, and Trump tries to force Jordan to accept Palestinians from Gaza, Jordanian activists said they are willing to fight.
Hamzeh Khader, 33, a Jordanian Palestinian political activist who grew up in Amman, said he believes that Jordan should reinstate military conscription and supply arms to militant groups in the Palestinian territories.
“The protection of Jordan is not only about keeping Palestinians out of Jordan; it’s about keeping Palestinians in their land,” he said.
Khawla Hammouri in Amman and Tariq al-Hmaidi in Amman and Jerash contributed to this report.