Why Trump’s Plan to Relocate Gazans Is Untenable for Jordan

President Trump’s proposal that the United States take over the Gaza Strip while other countries take in the Palestinians who live there is a deal King Abdullah II of Jordan cannot make.

The monarch rebuffed Mr. Trump gently, telling him at the White House on Tuesday that the American president was essential to peace in the Middle East and pledging that Jordan would host more Palestinians in need of medical care. And the approach seemed to convince Mr. Trump to walk back threats made before the visit about withdrawing aid to Jordan if it rejected his plan.

Still, the notion has laid bare dilemmas for King Abdullah, whose family — and the land they have ruled for generations — has a complex relationship with Palestinians that has at times turned violent.

Here’s what to know about the president’s plan and the history informing the king’s rejection.

The president’s proposal is vague and came as a surprise to even his advisers when he presented it last week. Mr. Trump has not been consistent or clear about what it entails except insofar as his plan certainly appears to rely on Jordan and Egypt, among others, accepting a huge influx of Palestinian refugees.

Mr. Trump has said that Gaza’s roughly 2 million people would leave eagerly and not want to return. But he has also suggested they could be forced out and not allowed back, which would violate international law, and damage longstanding visions of a Palestinian state composed of Gaza and the West Bank.

Either way, the Jordanian king is wary, not least because a big wave of Palestinians coming into his country after conflict with Israel fueled a bloody conflict in Jordan in the past.

Why is the plan problematic for Jordan?

Jordan’s king cannot assent to Mr. Trump’s plan without risking the ire of different important elements of his country’s population.

A surge in Palestinian refugees would further shift the demographics of a nation that already has a large Palestinian population — the estimated number of Jordanians with Palestinian backgrounds varies from one-quarter to two-thirds — and could inflame tensions between them and other Jordanians. And that could disturb the delicate balance that the monarch tries to maintain between guarding distinct Jordanian interests while standing with his citizens of Palestinian origin or descent and also supporting the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Accepting Gazans on a temporary or permanent basis could practically and philosophically undermine the struggle for Palestinian statehood, potentially causing unrest in Jordan and beyond. At the same time, a wave of new refugees would also irk monarchy loyalists who fear Jordan becoming a de facto Palestinian state.

More Palestinian migration may also threaten Jordan’s economic stability — and if past is precedent, national security as well. It could provide an opening to the armed Palestinian group Hamas, which has long wielded power in Gaza. Jordan in 1999 cracked down on Hamas, closed down its offices in the country, expelled some figures in the group and prohibited its leaders from carrying out political activities in the country.

“Jordan has a long and very bad history with organized Palestinian movements,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a former State Department Middle East negotiator.

What has been Jordan’s relationship to Palestinians?

In the wars surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948, some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from the new country — to the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria.

Jordan seized and annexed the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Egypt took Gaza, preventing the creation of the Palestinian state envisioned in a United Nations partition plan.

As a result of the annexation and the large number of refugees, Jordan was left with a significant Palestinian population, and it became a major base of operations for Palestinian armed groups fighting Israel.

But in the 1967 war with Arab states, Israel took the West Bank, which it still occupies, and annexed East Jerusalem. The war prompted another flow of Palestinian refugees into Jordan, about 300,000.

Two decades later, Jordan relinquished its claim to that territory, and it rescinded the Jordanian citizenship of some Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who now number more than 3 million.

Today, the estimated number of Jordanians with Palestinian backgrounds varies from one quarter to two thirds.

On the whole, Palestinians in Jordan are poorer and are less represented in government than other Jordanians.

When did Jordan clash with Palestinians?

The most notable showdown between Jordan and Palestinian groups began in September of 1970, also called Black September by some Palestinians. But the crisis was rooted in the 1967 war, when the Palestinian influx led to new refugee camps in Jordan and fueled the rise of militant groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization operating militias within the state.

Things worsened when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine hijacked airliners bound for New York and London, landing three of them at a remote airstrip in Jordan in September, 1970. The hijackers demanded the release of Palestinian militants imprisoned in Europe in exchange for more than 300 passengers. Most of the airline captives were freed within days, but some were held through the month.

The king imposed martial law, and intense fighting ensued between his military and Palestinian fighters that went on long into the next year. By the summer of 1971, the Palestinian forces had been expelled from Jordan and went to Lebanon.

“The residue of 1970 hangs over everybody in the kingdom,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,

Are there personal concerns for the king?

King Abdullah’s standing in Jordan rests partly on him and his wife, Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian descent, being longtime, vocal advocates of the Palestinian cause and Palestinian statehood.

Any move seen as undermining that cause could threaten his hold on power. And the relationship between Jordan’s rulers and Palestinians has often been bitter and sometimes deadly.

The current king’s great-grandfather, Abdullah I, reigned in Jordan first when it was a British protectorate and then as the first monarch of the independent Kingdom of Jordan, established in 1946.

The Jordanian royal family’s roots in Saudi Arabia had long raised accusations from some Palestinians that they were outsiders, and their friendly relations with Western powers — and, later, with Israel — caused additional political frictions.

King Abdullah I was assassinated in 1951 at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem by a Palestinian who was enraged by revelations that the monarch had been secretly negotiating with Israel.

His grandson, King Hussein, the ruler from 1952 to 1999, was additionally disdained as weak for his war losses, and faced assassination attempts and threats of ouster.