Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi appears to have put off a White House meeting with Donald Trump, with one leading Senate Democratic voice on foreign policy calling the move a major snub.

The U.S. president drew the ire of several key Middle East leaders, including el-Sissi, when he declared earlier this month that the United States would take ownership of Gaza, rebuild it as the “Riviera of the Middle East” and relocate its often-displaced Palestinian population to countries such as Egypt and Jordan.

“If you know anything about Egypt, you know that they do not want to absorb, and especially through a forcible relocation, folks from Gaza,” Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CQ Roll Call. “El-Sissi has been extremely clear about this for years, and so the president floating this as an idea, obviously, has infuriated him.

“And it has also infuriated (Jordanian King Abdullah II). He’s used more diplomatic and discreet language, but if you know the king of Jordan, you know he feels equally as distressed about it,” Kaine added.

But Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, a member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence committees, chuckled when asked about el-Sissi putting off his visit over Gaza.

“I don’t know what the rationale is, but I don’t think the issue is going away,” Cornyn said. “I mean, he’s right next door to Gaza, so I would expect, at some point he’s going to have to engage with the president.”

Arab leaders were scheduled to huddle in Saudi Arabia this weekend as they scramble to form a plan of their own, hoping to sell Trump on an alternative to his idea of American ownership of the beleaguered strip. To that end, Larry Garber, a former senior U.S. Agency for International Development mission director for the West Bank and Gaza, said American involvement will be key for whatever Gaza eventually becomes.

“The Saudis and other Arab countries have made clear that they will not contribute to a rebuilding effort absent an Israeli commitment to recognize a Palestinian state,” Garber wrote for the Middle East Institute. “Ultimately, the amounts placed on the table by the United States, as a percentage of the contributions of European and regional actors, are less important than a commitment to remain integrally involved in the reconstruction efforts as guarantor of the process.”

Kaine said Trump’s “doubling down” on his Gaza plan was another reason for el-Sissi not to show up in Washington.

“When he said it, he had members of his own team trying to walk it back, and then he doubled down,” the senator said. “I’m assuming he’s serious about it. That’s why … I think Congress should tell him this is a nonstarter.”

Another Senate Democrat recently noted Egyptian officials’ opposition to Trump’s talk of the United States taking over the strip and redeveloping it as a swanky resort area.

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, another Democratic member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said Trump’s remarks “put gasoline on an already raging fire in Gaza and throughout the Middle East.”

“It’s immoral to suggest the United States is going to participate in forcibly transferring 2 million Palestinians out of Gaza,” Van Hollen said at a Feb. 12 Budget Committee hearing. “It will destabilize the region, which is why the king of Jordan was here … saying, ‘Don’t do this. I’m not going to take any Palestinians.’”

“That’s why the Egyptians said, ‘No way,’ and it’s why the Saudis immediately rejected the idea,” he added.

Abdullah seemed to signal an imminent el-Sissi visit to Washington as he sat alongside Trump in the Oval Office last week, telling reporters when asked for his thoughts about the U.S. owning the Gaza Strip, “Well, I think as I said earlier, the president is looking at Egypt coming to present their plan.”

But a meeting with el-Sissi never appeared on the president’s public schedules released by the White House this week. White House National Security Council spokespersons did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

While El-Sissi and other Arab leaders mull whether to craft a long-term Gaza plan, there are no plans, yet, for the Egyptian leader to present such a road map to Trump, exposing a fissure between Washington and Cairo.

“The Arab Republic of Egypt expresses its aspiration to cooperate with the U.S. administration, led by President Trump, to achieve a comprehensive and just peace in the region by reaching a just settlement of the Palestinian issue that takes into account the rights of the region’s people,” the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a Feb. 11 statement.

The ministry said Egypt would present a “comprehensive vision for the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip in a manner that ensures the Palestinian people remain in their homeland” and called for addressing the “root cause” of the decades-old conflict by “ending Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and implementing the two-state solution.”

‘Friendship’

Asked by reporters Wednesday night on Air Force One about an Egyptian blueprint for Gaza, Trump replied, “I haven’t seen it.”

Trump and el-Sissi, who met one-on-one and in group settings multiple times during the U.S. leader’s first term, spoke by telephone on Feb. 1 as Trump spent that weekend at his South Florida resort. The White House described the call in personal terms, saying in a summarized readout that el-Sissi initiated the conversation and “congratulated President Trump on his inauguration.”

“President Trump thanked President el-Sissi for his friendship, and discussed the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. The two leaders also discussed Egypt’s important role in the release of hostages from Gaza and President el-Sissi expressed his confidence that President Trump’s leadership could usher in a golden age of Middle East peace,” the summary read.

But, just three days later, Trump shocked the world with a daylong series of statements that culminated with him floating a hastily crafted plan under which the United States would “own” Gaza and the 1.7 million Palestinian residents there would be relocated — for many, permanently, to as many as six sites across the Middle East.

Such a major upheaval in a volatile region like the Middle East would typically take months to plan, requiring the input of a long list of officials inside the federal security and national security apparatus and, sometimes, outside policy experts. Those proposals would ultimately be approved by relevant Cabinet-level officials and the president, before regional allies are briefed as a courtesy.

Not so on Trump’s Gaza plan, his top spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt acknowledged during a Feb. 5 White House press briefing: “The plan was written in the president’s remarks last night as he revealed it to the world and to the American people, and his team are continuing to be engaged on this effort.”

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