US Donald Trump confidently shrugged off Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Sisi’s avowed rejection of his request for them to cooperate with his plan to expel the population of the Gaza Strip to their countries. “They will do it” and take in the deportees, he predicted.

This leaves the two countries with a stark choice: either confrontation, and perhaps undeclared war, with the current US administration, or compliance and submission, in an act of treachery amounting to a Second Nakba.

Trump used the term “clean out” to describe his proposed ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, 85% of whose more than two and a quarter million inhabitants were originally uprooted from southern and coastal Palestine. Instead of allowing them back to their hometowns and villages, he seeks to displace them a second or third time in conformity with Benjamin Netanyahu’s designs. The Israeli premier began his genocidal war by forcing nearly two million Palestinians from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip, close to the Egyptian border, as a prelude to mass expulsion. Were it not for the Palestinian people and the Egyptian army’s rejection 15 months ago, these people would now be living in tent cities on the remnants of the former Israeli settlement of Yamit in Sinai. Anthony Blinken was totally on board with this plan and secured promises of funding for it from some Gulf states.

The only thing that unites the Egyptian people, military establishment, and political leadership is support for the Palestinian cause and rejection of any such displacement that could deal it a fatal blow. The same can be said of Jordan.

We must remember that after President Anwar Sadat sold out the Palestinian cause and accepted the capitulationist Camp David accords, he paid for his life at the hands of Egyptian army soldiers during a military parade for the whole world to see.

Trump’s strongest weapon for enforcing he would plan to cut Egypt and Jordan off from financial aid if they continue to resist the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. But the resultant backlash could cause chaos in the region, fuelling armed conflict and extreme nationalism, making US military bases vulnerable to attack, and scuppering existing peace agreements.

Trump is more devoted to and supportive of the Zionist expansionist project than any previous American leader. He thinks like a real estate broker, hence his Middle East ‘Deal of the Century’ and schemes to enlarge Israel by annexing Arab territory, starting with the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and East Jerusalem and extending to the West Bank and parts of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan after the Gaza Strip has been emptied. It was no coincidence that Trump chose Zionist real estate tycoon and lawyer Steve Witkoff as his envoy to the Middle East and that one of his first tasks was to sneak into Gaza to take a close-up look at the ‘goods’ pending the Strip’s evacuation to enable the big Zionist land grab.

Th well-connected American pundit Thomas Friedman revealed some features of the deal in his latest weekly column. He advised Trump to divide the Gaza Strip into two zones like the West Bank: an Area A comprising 80% of the territory under Palestinian and international control and an Area B mainly in the north under Israel’s military control for an interim period until it is satisfied that it borders and settlements are safe. The eventual solution would be a Palestinian authority (not a state) led by Salam Fayyad to administer what remains of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This probably reflects the thinking within the Trump administration. Gaza’s oil and gas reserves and potential tourism developments are concentrated in the north. That is why Netanyahu concentrated on depopulating the north for the past four months, inflicting immense destruction—especially on Jabalia, Beit Lahia, and Beit Hanoun—and forcing out some 70% of the inhabitants. But he ultimately failed, and his army suffered heavy losses at the hands of the resistance. It is no coincidence that it chose to hand over one of its Israeli captives in the ruins of Jabalia.

Egypt and Jordan’s firm rejection of Trump’s ethnic cleansing scheme could prompt Israel to abandon the cease-fire in Gaza, and maybe Lebanon too, and return to war with the full support of the Trump administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted at this when he said he was not sure the cease-fire would hold.

If the Egyptian and Jordanian leaderships persist in their resistance, that could lead to the collapse of the Camp David and Wadi Arba agreements, liberating the two ‘confrontation states’ from their shackles and shame. That would be a major achievement of the al-Aqsa Flood: taking the region back to square one of resistance to the Zionist enterprise and its Western backers.