When it comes to United States President-Elect Donald Trump, not everything about him is straight forward. When it comes to American foreign policy on the Middle East a second Trump Administration is likely to feature it high on Washington’s agenda. During his previous term in office Trump chose to go to Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip. When in Riyadh Trump attempted to broker a “deal of the century” for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ending the wars in Gaza and Lebanon and integrating Israel in the Middle East are likely to be at the top of the president-elect’s Middle East agenda, analysts said. “Netanyahu will face a much tougher president than he is used to in the sense that I don’t think that Trump would tolerate the wars in the manner that they are happening,” said Mustafa Barghouti, leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, adding that for Palestinians, it won’t make a major difference “because both administrations were totally biased” toward Israel. Trump doesn’t want those wars “on his desk as a burning issue” come January 20, when he is inaugurated, Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat, told CNN. “He will say: wrap it up; I don’t need this,” Pinkas said, adding that Trump will likely ask the Israeli prime minister to “announce victory” and then strike a deal through mediators.
Trump will likely be more assertive of calling for a ceasefire from Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Should Netanyahu refuse Trump could reign him in by threatening to cut off the military aid and weapons, Washington has so generously sent to Tel Aviv. But this end to money and weapons remains to be seen. Trump possibly knows that in the aftermath of the complete destruction of Hamas something much worse could arise in its place. This is why he wants Netanyahu to relax his aggressive campaign against the group and at least reach an acceptable agreement on the release of the hostages Hamas had taken on seventh of October. Of course, even if the new Trump Administration is able to persuade both parties to accept a cease fire the motives of the President-Elect need to be looked at carefully. His presidency has always proven to be ambiguous.
None the less an end to the current war would be welcomed.
The 7 October Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel were seen by the West, particularly in the US, as a case of random terror unleashed by the Palestinians. But as Palestinian analysts have laid out, the war was a manifestation of a number of factors, including the dire economic situation in Gaza, repeated attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian land and also by the pushing of a potential deal to normalise ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel. A look at Trump’s first year in office shows that the former president disrupted longstanding political positions in the Middle East, and at the centre of those policy shifts was Israel. Trump received, and still continues to receive, major backing from the US evangelical Zionist movement. The Christian Zionist movement is a major force in conservative politics, experts told Middle East Eye during Trump’s presidency.
The attacks by the Hamas militant group on October last year were not acceptable, but when the Palestinians in Gaza were isolated from the rest of the world, while Hamas watched their brothers in the West Bank suffer heavy repression and languishing in Israeli Prisons under “administrative detention”. It was this that had provoked Hamas to launch its attack on an Israeli concert from Gaza. The frustration had been building up for quite some time and the lack of any form of trade with the outside world added to the pressure. Trump if he has a heart needs to acknowledge that he is in part responsible for this by favouring both Israel and the Netanyahu government in its unjust policies. His open flirtation of the Zionist regime at the behest of the American Christian evangelical movement had much to contribute to the current situation and genocide.
Trump ended his first year in office with a landmark foreign policy move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The decision broke from a decades-long bipartisan policy for US presidents to abstain from making the assertion, and the move was met with outrage from segments of the international community, including the Arab and Muslim world. The businessman-turned-president then capitalised on this move months later by moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. In March 2019, he signed an executive order recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. His policy shifts on Israel didn’t just focus on Israel’s claims on occupied land either, as the Trump administration also withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, stating that the international body showed negative bias when it came to Israel.
One of his last moves in favour of Israel was to declare that products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank had to be labelled “Made in Israel”. Trump also moved to further weaken the position of Palestinian leadership.
Trump’s main motive in remaining steadfast in supporting Israel had of course been securing the votes of the US’s evangelical Christian community, although since the war in Gaza the dynamics have changed somewhat. There have been large scale protests both in the United States and across the world against Israel’s ongoing aggression. And when you take the human cost into account in terms of the brutal repression, mass arrests and separation walls is it really worth it? Is it worth trading with Israel and sending aid to it in terms of weapons and equipment? Due to the way a certain prophecy in biblical scripture was interpreted? In terms of Jesus (Hazrat Essa ala hi Salaam)’s return? The recognition of the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights by the previous Trump Administration (2017-2020) was long pressed forward by the Israeli lobby.
The Golan Heights should be returned to Syria as it is an integral part of that country’s territory. If Trump does manage to end the war between Israel and Hamas and the attacks in Lebanon then it would be the first intelligent decision he would have taken when beginning office. However, it is still too early to say if Trump will slip back to his old policies. We may possibly come to know when he takes the oath of the US presidential office in January next year.
Article written by:
Yacoob Cassim
Journalist at Radio Al Ansaar
