Even earlier than the US presidential election polls had closed on Tuesday evening, Israel’s far-right Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir had taken to Twitter, posting “Yesssss” in English, whereas including emojis of a flexing bicep and pictures of the Israeli and American flags.
Yesssss 💪🏻🇮🇱🇺🇸 https://t.co/kPqkYI3PDP
— איתמר בן גביר (@itamarbengvir) November 6, 2024
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was solely barely slower in congratulating Trump on his triumph within the US presidential election, turning into the primary world chief to take action and framing Trump’s victory as a “highly effective recommitment to the good alliance between Israel and America”.
Pricey Donald and Melania Trump,
Congratulations on historical past’s biggest comeback!
Your historic return to the White Home affords a brand new starting for America and a strong recommitment to the good alliance between Israel and America.
This can be a enormous victory!
In true friendship,… pic.twitter.com/B54NSo2BMA
— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) November 6, 2024
Two days earlier than this week’s election, which noticed former US President Donald Trump stage one of many wildest political comebacks in current historical past, main the Republican Social gathering to a landslide victory, polls in Israeli media confirmed Trump had already gained the hearts and minds of many in Israel.
Requested who they want to see within the White Home, nearly 65 % of respondents stated they most well-liked Trump over his rival, Kamala Harris. Amongst those that recognized themselves as Jewish, the distinction was much more marked, with 72 % of these polled telling the Israel Democracy Institute they felt Israel’s pursuits could be higher served by a Trump presidency.
This can be a additional lurch in the direction of the Republicans. An identical ballot carried out by the identical physique in 2020 confirmed that 63 percent of Israelis favoured Trump over the eventual victor, Joe Biden.
For Vice President Kamala Harris, who polls showed took a beating for her administration’s unflinching, if often vital, assist of Israel’s conflict on Gaza and its refusal to halt army support, celebrations of Trump’s win in Israel probably come as one other twist of the knife in her defeat.
A ‘watershed second’
“Individuals are celebrating now,” pollster and former political aide to, amongst others, Netanyahu, Mitchell Barak informed Al Jazeera from Jerusalem. “I imply, you’ve seen the polls, individuals see this as a win for Israel, and for Netanyahu. He [Netanyahu] gambled on this, reckoning that he simply needed to maintain on until November and a Trump victory, and that gamble turned out to be proper.
“Inside Israel, individuals see this as being a watershed second,” he stated.
Within the build-up to the 2020 election, Trump had told US voters in a bid to win the Jewish vote that “the Jewish state has by no means had a greater pal within the White Home than your president, Donald J Trump”.
On this, unlike many of the former US president’s statements, he appeared factually right.
In his first time period as president, Trump defied worldwide norms and recognised the occupied Golan Heights – Syrian territory, two-thirds of which is occupied by Israel – as Israeli territory, accepted Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, subsequently transferring the US embassy and put in its pro-settler ambassador there.
Consolidating Israel’s place throughout the area, the US president additionally launched into what he termed the Abraham Accords, resulting in the normalisation of relations between Israel and 4 Arab states; Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan, in return for US concessions and, in lots of circumstances, entry to Israel’s innovative intelligence and weapons technology.
Extra lately, Trump emphasised his want to re-establish the nice and cozy relationship he loved with Netanyahu throughout his first presidency in July this yr when he welcomed the Israeli prime minister to his Florida property, Mar-a-Lago.
In distinction, the Biden administration’s relations with Netanyahu, whereas robust, have cooled by way of the course of 13 months of conflict on Gaza.
First, there have been the repeated US “considerations” over the Israeli marketing campaign on Gaza that has thus far killed 43,391 individuals – largely girls and kids – and with many hundreds extra misplaced and presumed lifeless underneath the rubble. Then there have been Biden’s red lines on Israel’s subsequent invasion of Rafah. And at last, the US authorities’s recent requests that aid be allowed into northern Gaza, which support businesses have stated sits upon the brink of famine. All this seems to have jarred with the Israeli prime minister who, in March this yr, went as far as to say that US President Biden – whose unflinching army and diplomatic assist has underpinned Israel’s conflict on Gaza – was “incorrect” in his criticism of Israel.
Given the strain that Netanyahu faces each at house – from individuals who need a Gaza ceasefire deal to be performed to safe some probability of retrieving the remaining Israeli captives there – and overseas, the place many nations are appalled by the degrees of violence seen in Gaza – Netanyahu wants an American ally that’s uncritical, analysts have stated.
Finish of the two-state resolution?
In addition to being extra probably to provide Netanyahu free rein over his actions in Gaza and the West Financial institution – as is feared by Palestinians within the wake of the election – Trump may be the catalyst to placing paid to any notion of a two-state resolution.
“Individuals usually accuse the Israeli proper of by no means trying too far ahead,” unbiased Israeli analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg stated of Netanyahu and his cupboard. “They usually’re usually proper. Nonetheless, with Trump, they’ve recognised that his election most likely marks an finish to the two-state resolution and Gaza, as we’ve recognized it.”
Within the US, regardless of its unflinching assist for Israel’s conflict on Gaza, the two-state resolution – no less than formally – stays a central tenet of the outgoing Biden administration’s international coverage within the Center East, because it has earlier ones for the reason that signing of the Oslo Accords within the Nineties.
In mid-Might, Biden doubled down on the longstanding American coverage, telling a graduation ceremony in Georgia: “I’m working to ensure we lastly get a two-state resolution.”
Nonetheless, simply weeks earlier, Trump appeared to take the other stance, telling Time journal: “Most individuals thought it was going to be a two-state resolution. I’m undecided a two-state resolution any extra is gonna work.”
Trump’s sentiment echoed the Center East peace plan, which he known as “the deal of the century” and introduced in the direction of the tip of his first administration in 2020. To some observers, it learn like an Israeli want listing.
In it, among other measures, Trump affirmed his intention to recognise the majority of Israel’s unlawful settlements in the occupied West Bank, acknowledge a unified Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, deny the best of return to Palestine’s refugees and, ought to statehood be granted to Palestine, guarantee it stays demilitarised.
With a newly returned Trump now in command of each homes of Congress and the Supreme Courtroom, there is no such thing as a legislative or judicial block stopping the incoming Trump administration from delivering what the outgoing Trump administration had promised.
“Trump simply doesn’t care. He’s not ,” Flaschenberg stated of Gaza and Lebanon, the place Israel has launched devastating assaults towards the political group, Hezbollah, thus far killing 3,002 Lebanese civilians within the course of in current weeks. “The one factor that’s new is individuals claiming to be shocked. They shouldn’t be. We’ve been right here earlier than,” he stated.
‘Slaughter as ordinary’
“Netanyahu and Trump share the identical genocidal agenda,” unbiased political scientist Ori Goldberg informed Al Jazeera from inside Israel, from the place Al Jazeera is banned from reporting.
“Each are towards what they see as ‘progressive wokeness’ or id politics. What’s extra, every assumes that the opposite is an fool that they will simply manipulate.”
Nonetheless, Goldberg cautioned that no less than a type of leaders’ evaluation of the opposite could also be extensive of the mark. “I believe Netanyahu could also be slightly short-sighted in how he sees Trump.
“Trump takes nice pleasure in his antiwar stance,” Goldberg stated, suggesting that, no matter guarantees had been made by Trump in 2020, sensible assist was more likely to be restricted to weapons and {dollars}.
“It’s actually unlikely he’d sanction American boots on the bottom, however then, let’s face it, whoever accused Israel or Israeli politicians of taking part in the lengthy recreation?” he stated. “For Netanyahu particularly, it’s all about making it by way of to the tip of that day.”
Within the meantime, with the weapons, support and diplomatic assist already supplied by the Biden administration troublesome to enhance upon, Goldberg predicted little tangible change within the quick time period.
“Netanyahu will proceed to do no matter he needs, simply as he at all times has,” Goldberg stated, “It’ll be slaughter as ordinary.”
