What Trump’s second term could mean for the Middle East

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) – US President-elect Donald Trump is preparing to assume office with a Middle East firmly gripped by tumult as Israel expands its wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, vows to annex the occupied West Bank, and engages in an escalatory cycle of attacks with Iran.

Trump has long signaled an eagerness for Israel to quickly end its wars, saying as recently as Nov. 1, while courting Muslim American voters in Dearborn, Michigan: “You’re going to have peace in the Middle East.”

That may signal less a desire for a peaceful resolution to the conflicts, and more of a preference for allowing Israel to have a free hand to wage total war against Gaza, Lebanon and forces viewed as Iranian proxies across the Middle East.

Indeed, Trump told Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu during an October phone call to “Do what you have to do,” while expressing support for the ongoing campaigns, according to The Washington Post newspaper.

At his core, Trump remains indifferent to the Middle East, and more fundamentally wants to ensure that the wars there are drawn to a rapid close so they do not consume the news cycle that he believes should be rightly dominated by him, regardless of the costs that may entail.

“He just wants it off the headlines,” Matt Duss, executive vice-president at the Center for International Policy think tank in Washington, told Anadolu.

He pointed to Trump’s flip-flopping on his stated intention of being an “even-handed broker” to resolve the Israel-Palestine dispute during his first term, later aligning himself closely with Israel to gain support from major donors and key voters, particularly Evangelical Christian Zionists.

“It's also actually consistent with America gets to do what it wants, and therefore America’s friends get to do what they want, because it’s an approach that is very much like a mob mentality,” said Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders.

“It’s like this is a protection racket … Our allies get special privileges. They get to do what they want, and if Israel wants to take the occupied territory, the occupied Golan, do all kinds of stuff, then we’re just going to support it. Those are the benefits of being kind of a made-guy in the American-led mob.”

He was referring to the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel captured following the 1967 Six-Day War, and annexed in 1981.

The US extended formal recognition of Israel’s claim in 2019 during Trump’s first term, and further recognized the contested city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the US Embassy there, owing largely to support from key members of his administration, including former US envoy to Israel, David Friedman, and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“That’s horrible for the Palestinians, who are going to suffer in that scenario. But also, there's a problem here that Netanyahu still has no endgame. He has still no plan for what to do. The Israelis generally have no plan for what to do if and when they finally end this war,” added Duss.

- Administration picks indication of what is to come

If Trump’s first administration had no shortage of pro-Israel advocates, the key figures he has so far announced for his next turn in office indicates there will be even more deeply entrenched firebrands supporting the most controversial of Israeli actions.

They include proudly self-identifying Evangelical Zionist former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as the next US ambassador to Israel; staunchly pro-Israel Representative Elise Stefanik as the US envoy to the UN; Iran hawk and unabashed supporter of Israel’s war on Gaza, Senator Marco Rubio, as secretary of state; and pro-Israel Fox News host Pete Hegseth as the next secretary of defense.

The picks come as Israel ever more clearly voices its intention to formally annex the occupied West Bank, an action long desired by the Israeli right that would all but put an end to any two-state solution.

“I intend, with God’s help, to lead a government decision that says that the government of Israel will work with the new administration of President Trump and the international community to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria,” ultranationalist and far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said in the wake of Trump’s victory.

“We will apply the sovereignty, together with our American friends,” he added.

All of the nominees, who are subject to Senate confirmation, have indicated an enthusiasm for ensuring that becomes a reality.

“There is no such thing as a West Bank – it’s Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee said during a 2017 visit to Israel.

He was asked directly on Wednesday during an interview with Israeli Army Radio if the incoming Trump administration would support annexation of the Palestinian territory.

“Well, of course,” he responded. “I won’t make the policy. I will carry out the policy of the president. But he has already demonstrated in his first term that there’s never been an American president that has been more helpful in securing an understanding of the sovereignty of Israel.”

The use of “Judea and Samaria” to refer to the West Bank has been similarly used by Stefanik and Rubio, the latter of whom penned a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in August accusing the Biden administration of seeking to undermine Israel by imposing sanctions on an extremist settler “for alleged human rights abuses in Judea and Samaria.”

“Although this is not the first time the Biden-Harris Administration has taken steps to undercut our ally, Israel, your recent decision risks exacerbating an already delicate situation in the region,” Rubio wrote, further suggesting the West Bank is “within” Israel’s borders.

“Israelis rightfully living in their historic homeland are not the impediment to peace; the Palestinians are. That the Biden-Harris Administration would sanction Israeli entities as Israel fights a war against terror is not lost on our adversaries, such as Iran,” he added.

Stefanik led a congressional grilling of several university presidents in April over student protests opposing Israel’s war on Gaza that were playing out on their campuses, leading to the resignations of all three.

She has long been a UN critic, accusing the body of antisemitism for its condemnations of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and has called for a “complete reassessment” of US funding to the UN.

Trump himself has signaled that he would not restart the efforts from his first administration to forge a two-state solution, criticized for reducing Palestinian territories to small enclaves described as new versions of the Bantustans used to weaken and fragment Black populations in apartheid South Africa.

“There was a time when I thought two states could work. Now I think two states is going to be very, very tough," Trump said during an April interview with Time magazine.

Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary pick, has a long pro-Israel track record founded firmly in far-right Christian nationalism. He has spoken adoringly of destroying the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque for a new Jewish temple.

“1917 was a miracle. 1948 was a miracle. 1967 was a miracle. 2017, the declaration of Jerusalem as the capital, was a miracle, and there’s no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible,” he said during a 2018 address delivered at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

“I don’t know how it would happen. You don’t know how it would happen. But I know that it could happen. That’s all I know. And a step in that process, a step in every process, is the recognition that facts and activities on the ground truly matter. That is why going and visiting Judea and Samaria, understanding that sovereignty, the very sovereignty of Israeli soil, Israeli cities, locations, is a critical next step to showing the world that this is the land for Jews and the land of Israel.”

The years mentioned by Hegseth refer respectively to the British Balfour Declaration, which endorsed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, Israel’s creation, and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the Golan following wars with regional states.

- Plans to pull out US forces from Syria

During his first term, Trump tried to withdraw US forces from northeastern Syria, but was met with sweeping opposition from his defense establishment and his Republican allies on Capitol Hill. This time around, experts believe, he may try to fulfill that goal.

Mark Katz, a professor emeritus of government and politics at George Mason University, said he was “surprised” that Trump did not withdraw the troops during his first term, because “as far as he’s concerned … what does he care?”

“Even if (Daesh) ISIS becomes strong again, let the people nearby deal with it. Why should the US deal with it? I’m sure his attitude hasn’t changed,” he said.

Duss, the ex-Sanders adviser, concurred, saying Trump was “clearly frustrated by the amount of pushback” he faced during his first term.

“There was much more active conflict, at least with regards to US troops back then, such that it was in people’s faces, and something Trump had to pay attention to,” he said.

“Now, should that start up again, I think he will pay much more attention to it, and may very likely want to pull US troops out of there. He may want to do it regardless, but right now it does not seem there’s a great deal of attention on it.”