Looming Trump Presidency Set To Embolden Netanyahu And Hurt Palestinians
The new U.S. administration is “going to be terrible for any sort of humanitarian effort in Palestine,” a State Department official told HuffPost.
09/11/2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already celebrated Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential election victory this week as “history’s greatest comeback.” And on Friday, Netanyahu signaled what he thinks Trump’s reascent to the Oval Office means for his own policies — by tapping a new ambassador to the U.S. who has roots in far-right Israeli political movements that disdain Palestinians and fuel Netanyahu’s power grabs.
Appointee Yechiel Leiter is a U.S.-born academic prominent in the Israeli settler movement — he in fact lives in one of the settlement communities, established in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank in defiance of international law. He was previously involved in the Jewish Defense League, a violent group purporting to combat antisemitism that was founded by extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane and that the FBI deemed a terrorist organization. Leiter has suggested dismantling the Palestinian Authority and annexing the West Bank to Israel — moves the U.S. and most other world governments say would be inflammatory and destabilizing, as the area is central to hopes for an eventual Palestinian state. And he has worked at the conservative Kohelet Policy Forum think tank, which promoted Netanyahu’s ongoing attempt to weaken Israel’s judiciary.
He is set to take the job in January, the same month Trump is scheduled to be inaugurated for his second term.
“That sends a clear message: Netanyahu is interested in representing the radical settler movement to the Trump administration,” Mairav Zonszein, an analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, told HuffPost of the appointment.
Michael Koplow of the U.S.-based Israel Policy Forum wrote on social media, “This is Bibi [Netanyahu] intentionally embracing everything that drove the [U.S. President Joe] Biden administration crazy—settlement expansion, judicial overhaul, democratic backsliding—and betting not only that Trump won’t care about any of these things but that Leiter can push them forward.”
The relationship between the looming Trump administration and Netanyahu has huge implications for millions of people, within Israel itself and in the Middle East broadly. With the bloody ongoing Israeli military offensives in Gaza and Lebanon, the targeting of Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory, and the risk that expanded conflict between Israel and its nemesis Iran produces a regional war that could ensnare the U.S., the change in administration comes with the possibility of a significant shift in the tone and priorities of the bond between the two nations.
Washington has long been Israel’s chief diplomatic and military backer, sending the country billions in weapons and aid annually, and hence the global player best positioned to influence Israeli policies. So far, most indications suggest a Trump presidency will be even more permissive to the Israeli leader than Biden has been, even as the Biden administration sent Netanyahu huge, largely unchecked military support following the Oct. 7, 2023, attack inside Israel by the Gaza-based militant group Hamas, which the U.S. calls a terror organization.
In retaliating against Hamas and pursuing other enemies, Israel has invaded Gaza and Lebanon, killing tens of thousands of people, a large proportion of them children. The Israeli military says it works to avoid hurting civilians. But independent investigations have accused Israel of disproportionate attacks, and the Biden administration has conceded “it is reasonable to assess” that Israeli forces have used American weapons in violation of international and U.S. standards for limiting civilian casualties.
Officials and experts doubt the new Trump administration will press Israel on subjects like its battlefield conduct or its harsh restrictions on aid for Palestinians.
Two State Department officials described how Trump-era changes will likely alter their agency’s agenda, which under Biden has included both sending weapons to Israel and U.S. nudges to allow relief to reach Gaza and to limit civilian casualties from Israeli operations.
The new administration is “going to be terrible for any sort of humanitarian effort in Palestine,” one official told HuffPost.
Both officials highlighted that the chief aid office at the State Department — the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which oversees matters like the U.S. relationship with the United Nations aid agency serving Palestinians — is expected to be shrunk under Trump in line with proposals from conservatives, like the Project 2025 plan. One described the bureau as likely to be “gutted.”
As officials are “bracing for transition,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken is believed to want some commitments from Israel on limiting the toll of its operations that can extend into the new administration, one State Department official said, noting that Blinken and Biden remain in office for more than two months.
“It’s unclear what the administration will just kick down the road and give up on just yet,” the official continued.
Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin last month told the Israeli government its limits on aid could prompt the U.S. to stop sending some weapons if they deem there is a violation of an American law barring U.S. weapons for countries that block American humanitarian assistance. The deadline they set for improvement is approaching next week, and experts say Israel is still blocking aid deliveries as famine looks likely in northern Gaza.
Yet it is not clear whether the outgoing administration will actually impose consequences on Israel for its aid policy, which would break with Biden’s pattern of resisting calls to do so. Even if it does, officials know Trump could quickly unwind any such move.
The White House has not yet issued any broad guidance on what Biden wants to achieve on Israeli-Palestinian issues before leaving office, according to one of the State Department officials.
A U.S. official working on Middle East matters at another government agency said “everything went silent” in internal discussions following the presidential election result.
That includes conversations about two of the signature Israel-related policies of the Biden administration, the official added: sanctions on Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians in the West Bank, and a proposed U.S.-Israel-Saudi Arabia agreement, which Biden aides claimed would give Israel an incentive to make a lasting peace with the Palestinians.
Some analysts believe that since Biden now no longer risks an electoral toll for appearing anti-Israel, he may apply more of the sanctions to discourage violence by Israeli settlers — which is at historic highs — and to preserve the idea of a two-state solution, which the president calls his goal. Trump would revoke the measures, the U.S. official predicted.
Once the new administration is in office, it could take steps that suggest a different U.S.-Israel dynamic, if Trump feels motivated to fulfill his campaign trail promises to end wars or Netanyahu feels he must take those pledges seriously.
But it’s likely the two leaders will find ways to break with the Biden era that still prioritize their personal political interests above concerns like permanently reducing the risk of more bloodshed and respecting the rights of civilians or self-determination for the Palestinians, Lebanese or others.
“You can also proclaim an end to the war and still have [military] positions within Gaza or outside Gaza,” Zonszein said. “Both in Lebanon and in Gaza, Israel could try and get a deal. ... That would allow it still to have a lot of freedom of action,” in terms of launching fresh waves of attacks in the future, she said.
“Maybe there would be some level of concession, and obviously a cessation of hostilities would be a big improvement, but still it would serve Israel’s interests as far as what the postwar situation would look like,” she continued.
Netanyahu’s definition of Israeli interests will likely be influenced by his right-wing allies — some of whom have discussed establishing Israeli settlements in Lebanon and Gaza — and by his determination to project strength in Israeli domestic politics. Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, overwhelmingly voted this summer against the idea of establishing a Palestinian state, and Netanyahu has repeatedly said he would not permit Gaza to be run by the Palestinian Authority, the body recognized by many nations as representing the Palestinian people.
The prospect of a U.S.-Israel-Saudi Arabia bargain could become a defining theme in Trump-Netanyahu interactions and affect policy decisions.
Advancing that idea may require a veneer of concessions to Palestinians, given Saudi statements of solidarity with them, Zonszein noted.
Yet Netanyahu can follow his own example in seeking deals with other Arab states during the previous Trump presidency: He threatened to formally annex the West Bank, then did not do so. The back-and-forth gave the countries that then recognized Israel, like the United Arab Emirates, a route to say they had successfully prevented Israeli annexation of the Palestinian region.
“He hasn’t formally annexed and honestly doesn’t have an interest in doing so. … What they’re doing is almost just as good” by expanding Israeli control there in more subtle ways, Zonszein said.
A straightforward path on the Saudi deal could be complicated, however, by how Trump and Netanyahu choose to approach Iran.
In his first term, Trump imposed “maximum pressure” on Tehran, and has since signaled he will appoint Iran skeptics to government jobs. Some of the foreign policy voices who are welcoming a new Trump administration and asserting it will deliver “peace through strength” have openly embraced U.S. militarism: “America must be prepared to use force directly against Iran, including its expanding nuclear weapons program,” Mark Dubowitz and Jonathan Schanzer of the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank wrote earlier this year.
And Netanyahu has long envisioned a U.S.-led effort to kneecap Iran.
Yet Trump has also hinted at negotiations with Iran, and the Saudis and other Gulf players he is close to have sought to avoid an all-out conflagration between U.S. partners and Iran’s network of regional allies.
As Trump and Netanyahu craft their approach, both are likely to benefit from dissenting voices being in a weak position. In the U.S., Democrats will likely spend months focused inward to try to understand their broad election losses, and Republicans and the Trump administration are near certain to clamp down on the anti-war movement and pro-Palestinian voices who are challenging U.S. policy on the Middle East.
Meanwhile, in Israel, Netanyahu has consolidated his power, including by firing his chief rival in government this week. And even the most symbolically significant of his critics — the families of Oct. 7 hostages whom he promised to bring home but has not been able to — have been unable to dislodge his dominance.
“The hostage crisis is still very much pushed by the families, but I think a lot of people understand that Israel has given up on the hostages and that’s no longer the main issue here,” Zonszein said, pointing to the Israeli leader’s push against the judiciary and a fight over whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should be drafted into Israel’s military.
“In terms of the political opposition in Israel, they don’t have a plan. … They don’t have a way to topple this government, so things are kind of static,” she added. “Most Israelis who are against this government and have been for a hostage deal are in serious despair, and there isn’t really any light at the end of the tunnel right now.”