NEWS ANALYSIS: What can Israel expect from Trump’s second term?

JERUSALEM – Israelis watched the U.S. presidential election results with almost as much interest as the country for which President Donald Trump is the presumptive next leader. After one of Israel’s worst years ever – which started on Oct. 7, 2023, and has continued at various levels of intensity since, the re-election of America’s 45th president has provided the country with a much needed injection of hope.

As ennui set in with regard to Joe Biden’s flailing presidency – both in the United States and Israel – citizens of the Jewish state looked to Nov. 5 as a potential springboard to radically alter the momentum in the Middle East. And the early signs that President Trump’s return to the White House could be a catalyst for change are already promising. So, what can Israel and Israelis expect from a second Trump term?

In general, Trump has stated he would bring an end to each of the main wars, which erupted under the watch of his successor and predecessor Biden, including the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, and Israel and Hezbollah. Some fear in his haste to conclude an agreement he might “sell out the Ukrainians,” in the Ukraine-Russia war, and amid concern he might be susceptible to a Putin charm offensive, enabling Russia to keep all or at least most of its territorial gains. An overlapping group of commentators and analysts think if a deal between Israel and Hamas and/ or Hezbollah is in the offing, the Jewish state might not end up in as advantageous a position as it thought.

Meanwhile, several people have pointed to other potentially interlinked pitfalls on the horizon. Despite the domestic pressure on the outgoing Biden-Harris administration and the at-times slow-walking of munitions to Israel, the United States has kept up a relatively steady supply, enabling Israel to maintain its multi-front war. The security assistance Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which despite his alleged animus toward the Jewish state President Obama signed in the final months of his term in office, and guaranteed Israel $3.8 billion per year in military aid, is up for renewal in 2028. Will a President Trump, entering the final stretch of the end of his second term, potentially improve this MOU when a replacement comes up for renewal? Will his aversion to foreign aid, and foreign wars, as well as a seemingly resurgent isolationist wing of the GOP, embodied by Vice President-elect JD Vance, mean Israel will be left disappointed?

In his address to the RNC in August, Trump made a forceful statement – bolder and more muscular than anything outgoing President Biden has managed in the 10-month-long war to that point. His message to the Hamas terrorist organization, which rules the Gaza strip, was very simple: “:Give back our hostages, or else.” In one sentence, his words carried more threat and menace than anyone in the entire Biden administration has mustered.

Trump at the RNC in a message to Hamxs:

“We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office or you will be paying a very big price.” pic.twitter.com/pF60UGVVc0

— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) November 6, 2024

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the first international leaders to welcome Trump’s re-election, and there certainly seems to be a great deal of satisfaction at his victory.

Dear Donald and Melania Trump,

Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!

Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.

This is a huge victory!

In true friendship,… pic.twitter.com/B54NSo2BMA

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) November 6, 2024

There is no question for the most part, Netanyahu and Trump had a good working relationship, and the then-45th president of the United States’ policies rebounded to Israel’s benefit. However, there were elements of conflict, unsurprising when two of the world’s thinner-skinned leaders, both of whom consider themselves artful deal makers, come into contact with each other. Trump was at times critical of Bibi, and according to Barak Ravid’s book, “Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East,” he accused Netanyahu of disloyalty when Israel’s leader congratulated outgoing President Joe Biden on his 2020 electoral win. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge in the intervening four years, with both leaders assailed by legal challenges, for example, and it will be worth watching to see if Trump can put such an episode behind him. If Netanyahu was no longer in charge – and he is fighting tooth and nail to hang on to power, would Trump have as productive a relationship with someone other than Bibi?

Away from the personal there are reasons to think Trump’s second term might be an attempt to revert to status quo ante. A number of his policies, no doubt shaped by figures such as his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Jonathan Greenblatt, and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman, among others, generated momentum intended to spread peace and prosperity throughout the Middle East (and North Africa), particularly at the expense of the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is indeed one of the helpful scenarios where conjecture can give way to reality.

At the end of September 2023, outgoing National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan made one of the worst blunders in modern political history, claiming “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” Eight days later Hamas invaded southern Israel and pushed – as its now deceased leader Yahya Sinwar hoped – the region, including Iran, closer to an all-out regional war. The genesis of that attack was largely caused by two disparate factors; the catastrophic U.S. pull-out from Afghanistan and Israel’s deep civil strife over the judicial reforms. In fact, Joe Biden’s meddling in the timing and manner of the Afghanistan retreat can also be viewed as a direct causal link for the outbreak of the Ukraine-Russia war. The counterfactual of these wars not taking place if Trump had been president is impossible to argue, but there was no sense they would have done if he had still been president.

Biden’s disastrous foreign policy decisions were coupled with a complete negation of one of the first Trump administration’s biggest policy wins – in both domestic and foreign terms – namely the Abraham Accords. Having decoupled normalization with Arab states from the Palestinian issue, the Trump administration – again largely through the efforts of Kushner, Greenblatt, Friedman, and others – was able to greatly advance peace in the region. Trump and his administration dismissed decades of so-called “orthodoxy” in terms of foreign policy thinking – espoused by failed leaders such as John Kerry – and diametrically opposed the notion that peace in the Middle East would flow from a solution to the Palestinian problem. The opposite was true, they argued. Show the Palestinians there are Arab and Muslim nations prepared to normalize ties with Israel and it will push them to reject their rejectionism and accept a Jewish presence in the Middle East. Trump tested the theory first on moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. “You’ll ignite the whole Middle East,” he was warned. He ignored them. And he was proved correct.

Further evidence of a previous Trump policy, which Biden unwisely undid, was the re-funding of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine and the Near East (UNRWA). Having been persuaded once of the danger this organization – which deals solely with so-called Palestinian refugees – posed, Trump can hardly be unaware of the role its “employees” had in the rape, murder, and kidnap of Israeli soldiers and civilians during the Oct. 7 massacre. The Knesset (Israel Parliament) has already severely restricted the dealings it is prepared to have with UNRWA and its employees, it’s possible one of the first foreign policy items on the Trump agenda might be to reinstitute its defunding.

The inevitable rebuilding of Gaza will be something Trump has to contend with. He is unlikely to want a Hamas-run Strip, although it’s not clear how much he would want a Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen)-led Palestinian Authority to be involved.

That leaves three huge issues, which to an extent are interlinked; the potential annexation of Judea and Samaria, Iran, and Qatar. The first has been underreported because of the more visible conflicts on its south-eastern and northern border, but there is enormous concern about Israel’s lengthy border with Jordan, and the extent to which Iran is fomenting violent uprising within it. An Israeli government of any stripe needs to take seriously the growing threat emanating from this region, and it is arguable – as Ambassador Friedman does in his latest book – that declaring Israel’s annexation of Judea and Samaria is one potential solution. The Biden administration – despite the PA’s support for Oct. 7 – has rarely diverted from its “two-state solution.” Is this another issue where the prevailing orthodoxy will be proved incorrect?

How the second Trump administration tackles the Iranian global threat will likely be one of the main features of his term; and here there is much speculation. Will an increasingly marginalized Joe Biden push for one last hurrah? Will he want to go for a foreign policy win to try and cement some kind of positivity as his legacy in office? Will he enable an Israeli attack on Iran, possibly even its nuclear sites (although current military wisdom suggests it doesn’t possess weighty enough munitions to carry out successful strikes), whether another ballistic missile attack emanates from Tehran or not. Trump’s maximum pressure campaign on Iran was clearly working – and the Biden administration, infested with pro-Iranian elements – rolled it back, allowing the Islamic Republic to redouble its efforts at sowing chaos in the Middle East. Trump is a winner, and he’ll want to wrest back the initiative from the mullahs.

And finally, what to do about Qatar. Trump has spoken of his close ties with the country’s ruler Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, whom he has described as a “friend.” And since the closing of the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, Doha houses the Al-Udeid Air Base, home to 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, the largest and most diverse of its kind in the Air Force. There is clearly a cozy relationship between the United States and Qatar in general, and Trump and al-Thani in particular. However, Doha’s role, especially in the light of both Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and being a key locus for the terrorist organization’s remaining leadership (which also includes Turkey – another story in and of itself), needs to come under some scrutiny. It was the Obama White House that pressured Netanyahu to accept Qatari cash to help pay civil servants etc. and imply doing so would enable Israel a period of quiet. This broke down spectacularly on Oct. 7. The Qataris’ hands are by no means clean in all of this, and they appear to be playing both sides of the ball to some extent.

It’s two months until Trump takes office, yet much can change in that time – especially in this unpredictable region. It’ll be a fascinating watch to see what happens next.