Jordan’s King Abdullah II walked a fine line in his White House meeting with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, offering some minor concessions toward Trump’s plan to relocate Palestinians in Gaza to Jordan and other Arab states, while not completely acceding to the White House’s demands.

Abdullah said in brief remarks with Trump that Jordan and other Arab and Muslim countries would put forward a unified proposal for Gaza. He also pledged to take in 2,000 Palestinian children from Gaza including some requiring medical treatment, but did not address Trump’s broader push.

He also didn’t comment on U.S. aid to the kingdom, which is still paused and which Trump has threatened to continue withholding if Jordan does not go along with his Gaza plan. Amman is heavily dependent on U.S. military, economic and humanitarian support.

Trump said, alongside Abdullah, that the U.S. will not buy Gaza, but instead, “take it.” But Abdullah said in a subsequent statement that he had “reaffirmed Jordan’s firm stance against the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.”

Abdullah also met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and a bipartisan group of senators on Tuesday afternoon in Thune’s office. 

Among the Republicans in attendance were Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Roger Wicker (R-MS) and David McCormick (R-PA). The Democrats who participated in the afternoon summit included Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Sens. Jack Reed (D-RI), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Chris Coons (D-DE) and Brian Schatz (D-HI).

A large group of House Foreign Affairs Committee members also met with Abdullah.

Speaking to Jewish Insider ahead of Abdullah’s arrival at the Capitol on Tuesday, Thune said, “We want to hear from him [King Abdullah] about his assessment of how things are going in his region, which is, as we know, fraught with lots of tumult at the moment, and what he sees as a path forward.”

“We heard last week from the prime minister of Israel and we’re going to get a chance to get a slightly different perspective perhaps,” Thune continued, referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. 

Asked if he was concerned about the differing priorities that Abdullah brings to the table, Thune said, “I obviously expect him to have a different view based on the constituency that he represents and serves in his country than what we heard from Prime Minister Netanyahu.”

“In the end, what we want to see is a path forward that allows all the nations in that region of the world to be secure, be stable and to prosper,” he added. “We need leadership, obviously, that can help facilitate and make that happen, and we’re interested in all those who have solutions on that path forward.”

Schatz, who called Abdullah “an extraordinary diplomat,” said they spoke about U.S. aid as well as Trump’s Gaza relocation plan. Another attendee said they also discussed the foreign aid freeze with the king.

“We have strong bipartisan support for the United States-Jordan partnership,” Schatz told JI after the meeting concluded. “I will note that all of our aid to Jordan is frozen right now. It’s not just operas in Colombia that we’re talking about, but vital security partnerships for water, for fighter jets and for the kind of budget support that makes sure that the government is stable.”

“[Secretary of State] Marco Rubio has a perfect right to eliminate anything that sounds goofy, but vital security partnerships should not be frozen,” Schatz continued, highlighting the shifting situations in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza.

“It is our presence in the region that helps to prevent things from going sideways,” Schatz said. “The reason we do economic and security assistance with our allies around the world is to prevent wars, and we are about to see the kind of instability that will come from the State Department’s inability to cut bad things and fund good things. They have a right to do that, but what they’ve done in the interest of making a political point is harm our allies.”

Schatz declined to discuss Abdullah’s own comments on Trump’s plan, but personally said it is “strategically and morally bankrupt.”

Experts on the region said that Trump’s Gaza proposal placed the Jordanian leader, whose grip on power has long been seen as insecure, in a delicate position.

“The king is walking into a hornet’s nest, probably among the most difficult meetings you will have in Washington, ever, given a set of issues that Trump has rapidly posed,” including his Gaza relocation and takeover proposal, his statement that Palestinians would not have a right to return to the territory and his threats to stop aid to Jordan, Ben Fishman, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Jewish Insider.

Fishman emphasized that Jordan is “dependent on the United States to support their economy.” He said that cuts to any portion of U.S. aid could have significant impacts on Jordan’s economy, and that it would have few avenues to make up those funds elsewhere.

“Jordan is now in this unenviable position of having to justify the support that it has received from the United States for many years,” Jonathan Schanzer, the senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI. “And this comes at a time where not only have the Jordanians been an outspoken critic of the president’s recent remarks, but the Jordanians have also not engaged in the supporting structures of the Abraham Accords, these Negev Summit working groups … and this could be viewed by the Trump administration as a snub.”

Robert Satloff, the Segal executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that Abdullah’s agreement to accept 2,000 children from Gaza appeared to be a concession to Trump to relieve pressure to go along with the relocation plan.

Fishman agreed that the proposal had let Abdullah “off the hook” and that his comments about a joint Arab proposal helped him avoid offering a direct Jordanian response to Trump’s Gaza plan.

Schanzer said that there is no “realistic way” that Jordan can take in large numbers of Palestinians from Gaza, which would violate a long-standing red line for the Arab world. Even accepting a small number of Gazans, he continued, could upset the Jordanian population, a sizable majority of which is Palestinian.

“The numbers, the demographics in Jordan, are already to some extent a threat to the regime,” Schanzer explained. “Adding to that will only make matters worse, and it would absolutely further dilute the power structures long controlled by … the traditional Arab tribes of Jordan.”

Fishman added Jordan has already been strained by taking in refugees from Syria, and that being forced to accept hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would cause further stress to social services and employment there.

Fishman said that there’s also an “identity issue” in addition to the “practical” one. The country’s view, and that of its population, has long been that “Jordan is Jordan, and the Palestinian state should be the Palestinian state.”

The war in Gaza, Fishman continued, has already caused unrest in Jordan, on top of the long-running instability that the monarchy has faced over its peace with Israel.

Reports in recent weeks had suggested that Jordan planned to accede to the U.S.’ longtime demand that it extradite Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian terrorist convicted by Israel for her role in the 2001 bombing of a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 16, including three Americans.

But those reports have not been substantiated, and Schanzer predicted that discussions about Trump’s Gaza plan would likely box out any discussion on the issue while Abdullah is in Washington.