Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump host­ed Jor­dan’s King Ab­dul­lah II at the White House on Tues­day and re­newed his in­sis­tence that Gaza could be emp­tied of all res­i­dents, con­trolled by the U.S. and re­de­vel­oped as a tourist area — a plan that could like­ly on­ly work if the Arab na­tion agrees to ac­cept more refugees.

How­ev­er, Trump said it wouldn’t re­quire com­mit­ting funds and in­sist­ed he per­son­al­ly would not be in­volved in de­vel­op­ment.

“We’re not go­ing to buy any­thing. We’re go­ing to have it,” Trump said of U.S. con­trol in Gaza, which he said would be pos­si­ble “un­der the U.S. au­thor­i­ty,” with­out elab­o­rat­ing what that ac­tu­al­ly was. Trump has sug­gest­ed Pales­tini­ans in the war-torn ter­ri­to­ry would be pushed in­to neigh­bour­ing na­tions with no right of re­turn.

The pres­i­dent spoke af­ter meet­ing Tues­day with Jor­dan’s King Ab­dul­lah II, who was asked re­peat­ed­ly by re­porters about Trump’s plan to re­make the Mid­dle East. The Jor­dan­ian leader did not make sub­stan­tive com­ments on it, nor on the idea that his coun­try could ac­cept large num­bers of new refugees from Gaza.

He did say, how­ev­er, that Jor­dan would be will­ing “right away” to take as many as 2,000 chil­dren in Gaza who are suf­fer­ing from can­cer or oth­er­wise ill.

“I fi­nal­ly see some­body that can take us across the fin­ish line to bring sta­bil­i­ty, peace and pros­per­i­ty to all of us in the re­gion,” the king said of Trump in his state­ment at the top of the meet­ing.

Ab­dul­lah left the White House af­ter about two hours and was head­ed to Capi­tol Hill to meet with a bi­par­ti­san group of law­mak­ers. He post­ed on X that dur­ing his meet­ing with Trump, “I re­it­er­at­ed Jor­dan’s stead­fast po­si­tion against the dis­place­ment of Pales­tini­ans in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“This is the uni­fied Arab po­si­tion. Re­build­ing Gaza with­out dis­plac­ing the Pales­tini­ans and ad­dress­ing the dire hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion should be the pri­or­i­ty for all,” Ab­dul­lah wrote.

King Ab­dul­lah II al­so called on the U.S. to take a lead­ing role in cre­at­ing peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the Mid­dle East.

He said ad­dress­ing the dire hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in war-torn Gaza by re­build­ing it, not dis­plac­ing its pop­u­la­tion, should be the main fo­cus of all par­ties.

“This re­quires US lead­er­ship. Pres­i­dent Trump is a man of peace,” Ab­dul­lah said in post on the so­cial me­dia plat­form X. “He was in­stru­men­tal in se­cur­ing the Gaza cease­fire. We look to US and all stake­hold­ers in en­sur­ing it holds.”

A “just peace” would see an in­de­pen­dent Pales­tin­ian state es­tab­lished along­side Is­rael, Ab­dul­lah said.

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Re­port­ing by ZEKE MILLER, CHRIS MEGERIAN, WILL WEIS­SERT of The As­so­ci­at­ed Press