The Daily Populous Friday January 17th, 2025 morning edition
Authored by inews.co.uk and submitted by theipaper

Trump cannot afford for his approach to foreign powers to be exposed as a paper tiger by Israel

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When Donald Trump won the US presidential election last November, commentators in Israel and the US said that the real winner was Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

They argued that although President Joe Biden had been slavishly supportive of Israel’s war effort in Gaza, Lebanon and against Syria and Iran, a Trump administration might give even greater military and political backing to Israel.

The Israeli ethno-religious far right were especially jubilant at the prospect of Trump taking over again in the White House, believing that he might open the door to several of their favourite policy options. These included the permanent Israeli occupation of north Gaza, exclusion of the Palestinians from there, and the establishment of Israeli settlements in Gaza.

It appeared possible that Trump might not oppose the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt, the annexation of the West Bank and, in the not-too-distant future, a US-backed Israeli attack on Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities and seek regime change.

Yet, it seems today as if these options are off the table. Trump has supported Biden’s ceasefire plan that has not changed much since last May. Trump’s policy towards the Gaza war remans fuzzy, but it crucially rules out Israel doubling down on its war against the Palestinians.

Gaza may be in ruins, but a battered Hamas is still in business. Palestinians will be able to return to north Gaza. Much increased aid will end what looks like a sustained Israeli bid to starve the Palestinians into submission.

At first, Trump looked as if he would perform according to Israeli expectations, saying a week ago that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the Israeli hostages in Gaza were not released by his inauguration day on 20 January. This threat seemed to be directed at Hamas, but later he added that it would not be good for Hamas or “frankly, for anyone”, if there was no deal.

War hawks in Israel are beginning to suspect that the second Trump presidency may not be as beneficial for them as they had hoped a few weeks back.

One of the commenters on Israeli Channel 14, the Israeli equivalent of Fox News, Erel Segal, discussed the unexpected impact of Trump on the deal between Israel and Hamas, saying that “we’re the first to pay a price for Trump’s election. [The deal] is being forced upon us… We thought we’d take control of northern Gaza, that they’d let us impede humanitarian aid.”

He said he had been mistaken in assuming that it was Ukraine that was going to pay a price for Trump’s election victory: “It could be that we [Israel] are the first to pay the price of Trump’s election,” he said.

Another Israeli pundit, Yossi Yehoshua of Ynet news, said that “there’s no need to sugarcoat the reality: the emerging ceasefire and hostage release deal is bad for Israel, but it has no choice but to accept it”.

Israeli expectations of Trump may always have been too high, but all the signs so far are that they are not going to get the sort of unconditional support from the US that they were expecting, possibly less than they got under Biden.

It is early days, but Israel may have misunderstood several factors about Trump. He is highly transactional. He needed Netanyahu and big pro-Netanyahu donors in the presidential election and does not need them to the same extent now. He does not generally like war and started no new ones during the four years of his first presidency.

For him, Israel is not the only game in town. He wants a security pact with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. He cannot get this while the war in Gaza goes on, or if Israel is annexing the West Bank. Trump will want to start his administration with a success for which he will get credit rather than Biden.

His campaign trail accusations that the war has gone on so long because of Biden’s feebleness will appear justified by events. By the same token, he cannot allow himself to be humiliated by Netanyahu, as happened so repeatedly to Biden.

In announcing the impending agreement, Biden rather pathetically claimed ownership of it. But it has hung fire for eight months because Netanyahu had learned that it was safe to defy Biden without him diminishing the supply of US weapons and political support without which Israel could not have continued the war.

Asked by a reporter if credit for the peace deal should go to Trump or himself, Biden haughtily replied: “Is that a joke?” But the answer is that it almost certainly would not have happened without Trump, whom Netanyahu will not want to offend at the start of his term in office.

This does not mean that he will be anything like an impartial mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, but he will not be a pushover for Netanyahu as Biden had proved to be. On the contrary, Trump cannot afford for his Maga approach to foreign powers to be exposed as a paper tiger by Israel or anybody else.

whats_a_quasar on January 16th, 2025 at 18:46 UTC »

It's a bit early I think to be writing headlines like this. The man isn't the president yet. The totality of the evidence presented in this piece seems to be that Trump is in favor of the hostage release / ceasefire deal, which as the article notes has been his position since the deal was first outlined in May.

The article is just straight punditry.

TheTeenageOldman on January 16th, 2025 at 18:45 UTC »

Trump is an extremely transactional person and organization, and Israel has a lot to offer Trump the person and Trump the organization.

JasinSan on January 16th, 2025 at 18:37 UTC »

Media play. I don't believe anything will change.