Donald Trump’s clear-cut victory in the US presidential election has shaken the entire world, and has been greeted with sharply contrasting reactions, especially in Middle East. For Palestinians, it felt like the final nail in the coffin. The opinion of a Gaza resident, Abu Osama from Khan Younis, retrieved by Reuters journalists, sums up the sense of dismay felt by Palestinians: Trump’s victory represents a “new catastrophe in the history of the Palestinian people” because “despite all the destruction, death, and displacement experienced so far, the coming period will be even more difficult and politically devastating.” Hopes for American mediation toward a fair resolution of the conflict are virtually non-existent, and Palestinians view the next four years through a lens of mere survival, trying to withstand the blows from Israel’s most right-wing government in history, which will now feel even freer from burdensome external constraints, such as the call to respect international law.
The news of Trump’s re-election as the 47th President of the United States has triggered great enthusiasm both within the political circle of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who wasted no time to congratulate the new President, and among the majority of the Israeli public. According to a survey by the Mitvim Institute for Regional Foreign Policy, 68 percent of Israelis viewed Trump as the candidate most aligned with Israel and supportive of its interests, compared to a mere 14 percent who favored Harris. This sentiment sharply contrasts with American Jews, who expressed a clear preference for Harris, with 79 percent support according to a National Election Pool survey.
Trump’s election victory has galvanized the settler faction, affiliated with the Otzma Yehudit party and Religious Zionism, whose representative, MK Simcha Rothman, officially opened the Knesset’s justice committee session on November 6 by offering a prayer in thanks for Trump’s success. The settlers had been active supporters of the Republican candidate through the “Jvote” campaign, which encouraged Israelis holding dual citizenship to vote for Trump, despite differences between their vision for full Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and a progressive re-colonization of the Gaza Strip and Trump’s “Deal of the Century” peace plan drafted toward the end of his previous term in office (2020).
This is one of the few Trump-era initiatives regarding Israel that the Biden Administration set aside – along with the UNESCO boycott – while vainly reiterating the two-state mantra without offering any viable alternative to the Republican proposal. At the same time, the Biden Administration maintained all other elements of Trump’s framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: launching and expanding the Abraham Accords, indefinitely abandoning the Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA), recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights (renamed “Ramat Trump” or “Trump Heights” in 2019), closing the PLO offices in Washington, moving the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, undermining UNRWA over its alleged collusion (involving 12 of its 13,000 employees) in the October 7 attack, and upholding the Taylor Force Act (2018). This act nominally prevents any US administration from providing economic aid to the Palestinian Authority, accused of funding terrorism through its support program for detainees, martyrs, and their families – informally slammed as “Pay for Slay.”
The new Trump administration will start here, aiming to deal a final blow to the Palestinian issue, resolving the conflict on Israeli terms by reviving the “Pompeo Doctrine.” This doctrine defined Judea and Samaria as “disputed” rather than “occupied” territories, effectively legitimizing Israeli settlements as measures for controlling and managing a territory with no well-defined status.
The apparent continuity between the pro-Israel policy of the Biden-Harris administration and Trump’s pro-settler stance has led some analysts to mistakenly claim there are no fundamental differences in the foreign policies of the two administrations, apart from their rhetoric. Marina Calculli, a researcher at Columbia University, argues that “Biden has replaced international law with executive orders, and Trump will continue down this path, only more aggressively and explicitly.”
However, it is far from true that Trump’s specific policies will not have rapid, visible, and potentially devastating effects on ongoing regional conflicts, especially in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While the Republican President has promised to end all wars within his term, his ready-made solutions will be imposed top-down by an administration – backed by a solid Congressional majority at home – that has little desire to commit vital resources, whether diplomatic or military, to the Middle East. Instead, it seeks to end ongoing conflicts with a diplomatic wave of the wand, enforcing pragmatic power dynamics on the parties involved, while bypassing historical rights and claims.
As Yisrael Ganz, head of the Yesha Council (the organization representing West Bank settlements), aptly summarized, with Trump’s victory, the longstanding “issue of a Palestinian state is out of the question.” His win removes any barriers to annexing Oslo’s Area C (about 60 percent of the West Bank not directly controlled by the Palestinian Authority) and opens the door to other potential “tactical annexations,” such as a buffer zone in Lebanon. This would involve a strip of territory up to 13 miles wide, extending to the Litani River as Israel has long sought, as well as the creation of a protected military zone in northern Gaza around the Jabalya refugee camp, covering approximately 35 percent of Gaza’s territory (a project known as the “Generals’ Plan” or “Eiland Plan”).
Trump may give the go-ahead to these Israeli military initiatives, not due to pressure from Netanyahu’s government – toward which he would be less susceptible than the current Biden Administration – but based on general approval of Israel’s efforts in the region. These efforts aim to eliminate Iranian-aligned militant groups on behalf of the U.S., avoiding a direct American military intervention and essentially doing Washington’s “dirty work.” As Kyle Orton, a Middle East analyst for the Henry Jackson Society, rightly states: “In a rational world, the United States would ensure Israel has the time and resources to deal with the Islamic Republic’s outposts in Gaza and Lebanon. These pose threats to American security and interests, and it’s as if a friend (Israel) were offering to solve the problem without putting a single American life on the line.”
In Lebanon, Trump might aim for an immediate ceasefire based on Israeli security guarantees, which would involve negotiating broader operational freedom for the Israeli air force (similar to current arrangements in Syria) along with a stronger mandate for UNIFIL at the border. In return, he could propose a swift reconstruction plan for Beirut primarily benefiting the Christian and Sunni communities.
These measures might be coupled with others, such as the complete dismantling of UNRWA – branded a “terrorist organization” in line with Israeli government accusations, despite its role in supporting 75 percent of Gaza’s population – as well as substantial tolerance for judicial reforms strongly backed by Likud, new dispensations from military service for ultra-Orthodox Jews, and normalization of settler access to the Temple Mount (Haram es-Sharif) in Jerusalem.
However, the most alarming consequence of the new Trump administration’s actions could be the collapse of the Palestinian Authority (PA), underfunded to the point where it could no longer ensure security cooperation with Israel or provide basic services to its population. In fact, a proposal is being considered, put forward by factions close to Likud and the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs (JCFA), for Israel to withdraw from the Paris Protocol – the economic chapter of the Oslo Accords. This move would be justified by accusations of the PA’s collusion with terrorism and the dissolution of a peace framework (Oslo) that no longer has any meaningful purpose. The goal would be to retain the taxes and customs revenues that Jerusalem currently collects on behalf of the PA. As Maurice Hirsch, JCFA director, puts it, this would simply be applying a basic economic principle: “You don’t pay for a product [peace and security, Editor’s note] that you don’t receive in return.”
However, it is on Gaza that the Trump Administration’s efforts are expected to be focused, and where its credibility as a pragmatic and effective “problem-solver” – pioneering and non-ideological – will be most tested. A bipartisan plan outlining a postwar scenario for the Gaza Strip already exists, having been developed at the Middle East American Dialogue (Annual Summit Advancing Middle East-America Dialogue, September 7-8, 2024). This behind-closed-doors conference brought together key regional players – including Israeli officials and opposition leaders, bipartisan U.S. congress members, and representatives of major Arab countries – with the exclusion of the Palestinians.
The plan envisions forming a strong alliance with Gulf countries to rebuild Gaza and transform it into a “Palestinian emirate,” tightly controlled top-down by a new leadership class as an alternative to the PA. The goal is to prevent Hamas or any other force allied with the Resistance Axis from regaining control of the Strip, while simultaneously anchoring the Gulf countries to the U.S. anti-Iran security strategy. This would also aim to prevent them from drifting into Russian or Chinese spheres of influence.
It is likely that Trump will endorse the peace plan developed by the United Arab Emirates in coordination with Ron Dermer, Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs. This plan proposes deploying an international peacekeeping force with a strong Emirati component in Gaza at the formal request of the Palestinian Authority (PA). It also calls for the establishment of a new, separate technocratic government as an alternative to the PA, potentially led by Mohammed Dahlan (a former Fatah member now running as an independent candidate). This leadership would ensure transparent governance, politically loyal to donor countries, and free from the power-sharing norms of the PLO.
The approach toward Gaza that both the new Trump Administration and the UAE align on involves the gradual marginalization of the PA, viewed as a stronghold of Abbas-loyalists committed to an outdated nation-state project. The aim is to shift power to a new Palestinian leadership class – more dynamic and open to novel compromises that exclude both the right of return for refugees and the creation of a fully sovereign state with defined borders, which is currently seen as unfeasible.
While the Biden Administration has so far attempted to secure a key role for the PA in Gaza’s future governance, Trump is expected to be far more direct in abandoning this option, relegating the PA to a secondary role as a contractor for internal security in Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
The Palestinian national project would be entirely undermined. Not only would the Gaza Strip be governed by a new leadership aligned with and likely supportive of the Abraham Accords, but the right to Palestinian self-determination would be reduced to a mere right to exist and develop – guaranteed by an international agreement within negotiations between major regional powers, ignoring the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people. This is exactly the opposite to what Arafat and Fatah had envisioned when they took over leadership of the PLO in 1969.
Once UNRWA is dismantled – an organization that, despite its dysfunctions, has represented the collective identity of a people and their ancestral connection to a land from which Palestinians are periodically displaced – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be “normalized” and thus effectively resolved by Trump. This normalization would reduce the conflict to a binary perspective of legality/illegality, applied to all those deemed eligible (or not) to reside in Israel and the Palestinian autonomous territories (a status granted by Israel), or framed in terms of terrorism/anti-terrorism in response to any violent opposition to this dominance.
In this context, Israel would aim to secure control over the Rafah crossing, potentially in cooperation with Egypt, as well as dominance over the Netzarim Corridor, which horizontally divides the Gaza Strip into two non-communicating halves.
Many will argue that this vision sounds apocalyptic in relation to the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for freedom, the demand for justice voiced by students on European and American campuses, the solidarity demonstrations that have filled Arab capitals and cities worldwide for almost a year, and the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, with over 43,000 deaths. However, they will soon realize that the pieces of the puzzle were already laid out, simply awaiting the expert hand of a puppeteer to piece them together. That guiding hand may now come from the new American Republican leadership, driven by its bold, ruthless “magic formula” (MAGA, or Make America Great Again) – a vision opposed to immigration, foreign influences, multiculturalism, globalization, and the rights of women and minorities, rejecting rights in general and especially international law, considered the most abstract of all. This administration is poised to ensure Israel’s control over the Palestinians in exchange for massive arms sales and robust security guarantees for its allies in the Gulf.
Cover photo: US President Donald Trump arrives with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu(R), before Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani and Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan participate in the signing of the Abraham Accords where the countries of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recognize Israel, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, September 15, 2020. (Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP)
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