Between the two fires

The visit of the Jordanian head of state, His Majesty the King, accompanied by the Crown Prince, to Washington and the meeting with US President Trump on Tuesday, February 11, 2025, was not easy, because its results were known in advance and estimated, and its outcome was difficult and confrontational in positions and options and a gap between the two official parties:

First, the American administration with its extremist stance in support of the Israeli colony, especially after Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, and the political and material generosity he received from President Trump, who is fond of siding with the colony’s policies and supporting it, and providing aid and needs as it wants in response to the American right-wing trends of Zionists and evangelical Christians who stand with the colony out of alleged misleading ideological motives, and in response to the political-religious team leading the colony.

Secondly, the head of state, His Majesty the King, who is visiting Washington armed politically with a clear Jordanian position, gives priority to preserving Jordanian national security, and preventing the colony’s tendencies and its attempts to throw the Palestinian cause outside Palestine, especially towards Jordan, after the late President Yasser Arafat succeeded in returning the subject, file, Palestinian cause and its institutions from exile to the homeland based on the struggle and activities of the first Intifada in 1987 and its sacrifices, and the gradual, multi-stage Oslo Accords in 1993.

His Majesty King Abdullah also conveyed the positions of the Arab parties, especially the results of the seven-member Arab ministerial meeting held in Cairo on February 1, 2025, in the presence of the foreign ministers of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Qatar, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Secretary-General of the Arab League, which announced the rejection of the US President’s statements to deport, transfer, and displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Jordan and Egypt, or to third countries.

The firmness of the decisive Jordanian position in rejecting Trump’s position also depended on the positions of the United States’ allies and the colony’s European supporters: Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, who rejected the US President’s proposals and considered the Gaza Strip, along with Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank, to be a single unit of the land and project of the Palestinian state, according to the two-state solution.

In the meeting and the open scene of the American-Jordanian summit, it was clearly evident on the faces and expressions of both parties that they were not in a state of mutual comfort, and they appeared tense, because each of them knew in advance the position of the other, and the lack of prior agreement on the hot issue that was the subject of discussion, dialogue and negotiation: the suffering of the people of the Gaza Strip and the repercussions of the colony war, the priority of urgent necessities in providing needs, reconstruction and the required political horizon.

It is clear that the bilateral summit meeting was limited in terms of time and date, and that each of them presented his vision without reaching any agreement that could be talked about or heralded, as the press conference was limited before the summit was held, and not after it, as is supposed to require talking about its results, which are clear and lie in the lack of agreement, and therefore the Jordanian position was confined between two fires: the fire of accepting the American offer, and the fire of clashing with President Trump.

What His Majesty the King said and wrote is that there is a plan that Egypt and Palestine will present regarding the Gaza Strip, which will be discussed at an emergency summit in Riyadh, to be presented and approved at the Cairo summit on February 27, 2025, to be presented to Washington and the rest of the international parties.

Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi also highlighted King Abdullah's position before President Trump, in emphasizing Jordan's constants towards the two-state solution, and that Jordan will not allow the displacement of Palestinians to its lands, and that Jordan's interests are based on the equation that Jordan is for Jordanians and Palestine is for Palestinians.