The visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to Washington has been indefinitely postponed, according to a report by Al Arabiya on Tuesday. Originally, Sisi was scheduled to travel to the US on February 18, but the visit was postponed due to Cairo’s opposition to US President Donald Trump’s plans to relocate Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Egypt and Jordan, Al Arabiya reported.
Trump is now using the threat of withholding US financial aid and military assistance to Egypt and Jordan as leverage, as he stated in an interview with Fox News on Monday. He warned that if Egypt and Jordan do not agree to the relocation of Palestinians, he will withhold the aid. Egypt has received military assistance from the US for nearly five decades, with the current annual amount being $1.2 billion, as a thank you for the 1978 peace treaty with Israel. Additionally, the US provides $300 million to the American University in Cairo, among other payments.
High-ranking Egyptian officials, who spoke to Al Arabiya, described the relations with Washington as the “most strained in three decades” and Sisi stated at the end of January that Egypt cannot participate in the “injustice of relocating the Palestinian people” according to the local news site Ahram Online.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II reinforced his country’s stance on the issue during his meeting with Trump in Washington on Tuesday, stating that he would not tolerate the relocation of the population from the Gaza Strip. He expressed his “strong rejection of relocating Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank” to Trump, emphasizing that this is a “common Arab position.” Abdullah II also offered to take in 2,000 Palestinian children suffering from illnesses during the meeting at the White House.