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The new Trump and his policy on Palestine

January 23, 2025 at 11:00 pm

In preparation for US President-elect Donald Trump’s second inauguration in Washington, D.C., security measures have been significantly heightened around the U.S. Capitol and its surroundings on Sunday. [Celal Güneş – Anadolu Agency]

US President Donald Trump entered the White House for the second time as the 47th President of the United States of America after taking the presidential oath. There is no doubt that his new and final term will be very exciting, given his controversial policies inside and outside the US. He began his first moments by signing a large number of executive orders that include domestic and foreign issues, which he considers an amendment to the policy and decisions made by former US President Joe Biden. It is also an implementation of his announced electoral platform and a victory for his supporters and allies inside the US.

The policy that Trump will adopt towards important global issues will be very different from his predecessor, Biden. He promises to end all wars, most notably the war in Ukraine, and to move towards settlements or deals. He also wants to impose tariffs on a number of countries, most notably Canada and Mexico. He insists on changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, as well as controlling the Panama Canal and Greenland. He intends to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate and the World Health Organisation. He has demanded that NATO countries increase their contributions to the alliance by 5 per cent of their gross national product, which European countries such as Germany, for example, have rejected. He promises to raise the American flag on Mars, along with other ambitions he wants to achieve under the slogan “America First” and putting the US back at the forefront of the world and regaining its strength.

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What concerns us primarily is what Trump is thinking about doing regarding the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Although no one knows exactly what his policy in the Middle East will be, we have received some uncomfortable indications, in addition to our experience with him in his previous term. He has his project, which was prepared by his aides who are absolutely pro-Israel, which he called the “Deal of the Century”, which stipulates the establishment of a Palestinian State on only 70 per cent of the area of ​​the territories occupied since 1967. According to this project, Israel was allowed to annex half of ​​Area C’s area. He moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and closed the PLO office in Washington as well as the American consulate in East Jerusalem. During his past term, all American aid to the Palestinian Authority was cut after legislation was passed in Congress. This included funding infrastructure projects and security services. He also stopped American support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

One of his first executive orders was to cancel the sanctions imposed by former President Biden on settlers and settlement groups accused of committing violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, who were placed on the American blacklist. This is considered an encouragement for the settlers to commit crimes, as they have already attacked cities, villages and towns in a number of Palestinian governorates and assaulted and burned citizens and their property in various areas. In fact, the annexation project that the extremist Israeli Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, seeks to implement in the West Bank is based on the “Deal of the Century” and the Trump administration’s approval of Israel annexing large areas of the Occupied West Bank. There is no doubt that inviting the settlers to participate in Trump’s inauguration ceremony, in addition to lifting the sanctions imposed on them, is a strong boost to the settlement project, and the settlers understand this as a green light for them to attack the Palestinian people.

Trump stated, five months ago, that Israel is small and that he is thinking about how to increase its area. This means that he still insists on granting Israel part of the Palestinian territories and perhaps other Arab territories to expand its state and become an appropriate size, in his opinion. Even after his inauguration, when he spoke about Gaza being in a special geographical location, and spoke about the destruction there, he separated it from the Palestinian issue, in general, and did not link it to the West Bank. He also said he was not confident about completing the stages of the deal between Israel and Hamas. Even his talk about stopping the wars did not include reaching permanent peace in the Middle East. If we take a close look at the new administration team he chose, especially Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the new US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, we find that they are exceptionally extremist and biased towards Israel. For example, Huckabee claims that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian”, adding that “that’s been a political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”

All that matters to Trump is completing the normalisation process between the Arab countries and Israel in the context of the “Abraham Accords” that were signed during his first term, and which do not include a solution to the Palestinian issue as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative. Progress towards normalisation with Israel by Saudi Arabia would be considered a significant achievement to him, given that previous normalisations have not brought about any meaningful change in reality. We are counting on Saudi Arabia to prevent normalisation between it and Israel without linking it to the establishment of a Palestinian State, based on the Kingdom’s position, which was expressed by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. Any change in the Saudi position towards responding to Trump’s demands without resolving the Palestinian issue would be a huge loss and wasting a precious opportunity that may not return.

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This article appeared in Arabic in Al Ayyam on 22 January, 2025.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.