Donald Trump refuses to say whether he will pull US troops out of Syria

President Donald Trump is declining to say whether he intends to maintain current US troop levels in Syria.

We'll make a determination on that, Trump told reporters on Thursday when asked if he intends to withdraw US troops deployed to Syria to fight the Islamic State group. We're not involved in Syria. Syria's its own mess. They got enough messes over there. They don't need us involved with everything.

The US had said for years that there were about 900 troops in Syria, but the Pentagon acknowledged in December that US troop levels had surged to about 2,000.

There has long been friction between the US and Syria's neighbours - Turkiye and Iraq - about the ongoing presence of American forces in Syria and the need to keep them at a particular level. Israel meanwhile has urged the US to maintain a presence in the country.

Trump said just before rebels ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad in December in that the US military should stay out of Syria.

Trump is also not giving up on the idea of Egypt and Jordan taking in Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, even as the leaders of both countries have flatly rejected the idea.

They're going to do it, Trump said in exchange with reporters on Thursday, when asked whether he could force Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from the war-torn territory. We do a lot for them and they're going to do it.

Trump does have leverage to wield over Jordan and Egypt, two strategically important US allies that are heavily dependent on US aid.

Trump first floated the idea last week, saying he would urge the leaders of the two Arab countries to take in Gaza's now largely homeless population, so that we just clean out that whole thing. He added that resettling most of war-torn Gaza's population of 2.3 million could be temporary or long term.

Human rights groups have already accused Israel of ethnic cleansing, which United Nations experts define as a policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove the civilian population of another group from certain areas by violent and terror-inspiring means.