6 hours agoLucy WilliamsonMiddle East correspondentReporting fromJordanBBCDonald Trump is expected to face fierce resistance from Jordan’s King Abdullah at the White House today, in their first meeting since the US president proposed moving Gaza’s population to Jordan.Jordan, a key US ally, has been treading a tightrope between its military and diplomatic ties, and popular support for the Palestinians at home.Those fault lines, already tested by the Gaza War, are being pushed to breaking point by Trump’s plans for Gaza’s peace.He has expanded on his demand that Gazans be moved to Jordan and Egypt, telling a Fox News anchor that they would not have the right to return home – a vision that, if enforced, would contravene international law.On Monday he said he might withhold aid to Jordan and Egypt if they did not take in Palestinian refugees.Some of the fiercest opponents of moving Gazans to Jordan are the Gazans who moved here before.Some 45,000 people live crammed into the Gaza Camp, near Jordan’s northern town of Jerash, one of several Palestinian refugee camps here.Sheets of corrugated iron hang over narrow shop doorways, and children rattle along on donkeys between the market stalls.All the families here trace their roots back to Gaza: to Jabalia, Rafah, Beit Hanoun. Most left after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, seeking temporary shelter. Generations later, they are still here.”Donald Trump is an arrogant narcissist,” 60-year-old Maher Azazi tells me. “He has a mentality from the Middle Ages, the mentality of a tradesman.”Maher left Jabalia as a toddler. Some of his family are still there, now picking through the rubble of their home for the bodies of 18 missing relatives.Despite the devastation there, Mr Azazi says Gazans today have learned the lessons of previous generations and most “would rather jump into the sea than leave”.Those who once saw leaving as a temporary bid for refuge, now see it as helping Israel’s far-right nationalists take Palestinian land.”We Gazans have been through this before,” says Yousef, who was born in the camp. “Back then, they told us it would be temporary, and we would return to our home. The right to return is a red line.””When our ancestors left, they had no weapons to fight, like Hamas has now,” another man tells me. “Now the younger generation are fully aware of what happened with our ancestors, and it will never happen again. Now there is resistance.”Palestinians are not the only ones to seek refuge in Jordan – a tiny superpower of stability surrounded by the Middle East’s many conflicts.Iraqis arrived here, fleeing war in the early 2000s. A decade later, Syrians came too, prompting Jordan’s king to warn that his country was at “boiling point”.Many native Jordanians blame the waves of refugees for high unemployment and poverty at home. A food bank by the mosque in central Amman told us it hands out 1,000 meals a day.Waiting for work outside the mosque, we met Imad Abdallah and his friend Hassan – both day labourers who have not worked in months.”The situation in Jordan used to be great, but when there was the war in Iraq, things got worse, when there was the war in Syria, it got worse, now there’s a war in Gaza, it’s got a lot worse,” Hassan said. “A …
