Jordan’s King Faces a Bind as He Meets With Trump

King Abdullah II, a close U.S. ally dependent on aid from Washington, is confronting the president’s demands that he take in Palestinians from Gaza, a step the king’s domestic politics will not allow.

In July 2021, the first time that King Abdullah II of Jordan met with President Joseph R. Biden Jr., he was greeted warmly as a reliable American partner whose country is a bulwark for security in the Middle East.

“You live in a tough neighborhood,” Mr. Biden said as they sat in the Oval Office.

The king, who will meet with President Trump on Tuesday, may find Washington to be the tougher neighborhood this time around.

Mr. Trump has reiterated his intention to expel Palestinians from the Gaza Strip as part of his plan for the United States to “own” the territory, and on Monday he suggested he could consider slashing aid to Jordan and Egypt if their governments refused to take in an estimated 1.9 million Palestinians from Gaza.

Both Jordan and Egypt flatly rejected the idea when Mr. Trump first raised it last week, putting King Abdullah in a bind as he prepares to meet with the president.

Rebuffing Mr. Trump’s demands could imperil the more than $1.5 billion in foreign aid that Jordan receives each year from the United States. A separate, classified stream of American money flows to Jordan’s intelligence services.

At the same time, more than half of King Abdullah’s approximately 12 million subjects are of Palestinian descent, and Middle East experts say that the survival of his family’s rule depends on his digging in against Mr. Trump’s plan.

“King Abdullah cannot go along with it,” said Paul Salem, the vice president for international engagement at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “He cannot survive the idea that he’s colluding on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

“It’s existential for him and his government.”

King Abdullah is also expected to use his meeting with Mr. Trump to push against any attempts by Israel to annex part or all of the West Bank, which far-right members of Israel’s government speak openly about and some of Mr. Trump’s appointees have long advocated. The West Bank sits directly on Jordan’s border, and an Israeli move to take more Palestinian land could lead to violence and unrest that could spill into Jordan.

Jordan is already home to approximately 700,000 refugees, most of them Syrians who fled from that country’s civil war.