(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The day after the US election, right-wing factions in Israel clearly felt emboldened. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a leader of the 600,000‑strong West Bank Jewish settler movement, told reporters that Donald Trump’s victory gives Israel the chance to impose sovereignty over that area, where 3 million Palestinians live without citizenship. And the newly installed defense minister, Israel Katz, called for an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear program in a meeting with military leaders: “This is doable—not only on the security front, but also on the diplomatic front.” Billboards sprouted across the country with a picture of Trump in front of US and Israeli flags and the words “Congratulations! Trump, Make Israel Great!”
It’s hardly surprising that a second Trump administration is being hailed in Israel, where polls showed two-thirds of the population supported him. When he was last in office, he moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights (conquered from Syria in 1967) and forged diplomatic ties between Israel and four Arab states without any gesture toward Palestinian sovereignty. He also said West Bank settlements weren’t violations of international law.
Joe Biden embraced Israel in his four years, authorizing billions of dollars of extra military aid for its wars against Hamas and Hezbollah following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and kidnapping of Israelis. But his administration kept criticizing the extensive civilian deaths and suffering in Gaza and Lebanon, and US pressure led Israel to delay its entry in Rafah and attacks on Hezbollah.
Human rights are rarely a concern of Trump’s. He likes winners, and, with its successful attacks on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, Israel appears to be in the winning category just now. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with Trump before the election about his plans to strike Iran in retaliation for its missile assault on Israel, Trump said he told him: “Do what you have to do.” Katz’s analysis of why the moment is ripe for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities referred to two factors: Israel’s Oct. 26 attack on Iran had stripped it of many of its air defense systems, and the election of Trump, who’s often described Iran as the source of problems in the Middle East.
For Netanyahu it’s been a challenging couple of years—massive demonstrations against his attempt to weaken the judiciary, followed by the Hamas invasion that killed 1,200 and wars on two fronts. Having expanded his coalition and purged nonloyalists with the firing of his defense minister, he’s expected to stay in office for two more years.
Trump’s first ambassadorial appointment was Mike Huckabee to Israel. The former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister is a great advocate of right-wing Zionism, especially West Bank settlement. Yet Trump has told Netanyahu he wants Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon to be over by the time he takes office, according to the Times of Israel. Could Trump give Netanyahu an excuse to restrain coalition partners to his far right? Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, thinks so. Netanyahu, he wrote in a recent op-ed, “will be able to say to them, ‘The president twisted our arm.’ ”
That could factor into a deal involving Saudi Arabia, which seeks a defense pact with the US and wants, in exchange for establishing relations with Israel, to see a path to a Palestinian state. And that, Oren says, may be a price Netanyahu accepts and which he could again blame on Trump. If so, it could draw on a plan from the first Trump administration in which Israel annexes 30% of the West Bank and grants the remainder to the Palestinians for a rump, demilitarized state—a plan fiercely rejected by the Palestinians, who may find they have little power to influence negotiations.
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