D-3 before the American elections. Each of the candidates used Israel as a point of contention before the November 5 vote, each accusing the other of not supporting it enough. “If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades burning”this is what Donald Trump declared in a message on the social network Truth. On site, the main stakeholders are watching the end of the campaign carefully.
Donald Trump, seen from Israel, is the friend of Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2017, he moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. He was also the one who sponsored the normalization of relations between Israel and the Gulf countries. Since then, the former tenant of the White House has had an Israeli colony in his name and Israelis, like David, remember it with nostalgia: “If Donald Trump comes back to power we'll see more of these great things. We've been really pleased with this administration in their first four years. So I hope these advances will spread around the world as well.”
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris support the war waged by Israel on several fronts. Both also want to expand normalization relations between Israel and their neighbors. The only thing that differs is the way in which support for Israel will be done. Whether one or the other is elected, on November 5, the United States will remain the best allies of the Jewish state.
On the Palestinian side, however, it is more complicated. Ines Abdel Razek is the advocacy director of the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy, an independent organization based in Ramallah. For her, the question that remains unanswered is what it would change for the Palestinians to have Trump or Harris, one or the other, in the White House: “It’s a bit of a choice between the plague and cholera for the Palestinians. Because they were either extremely disappointed, or saw nothing change in the four years of the Biden administration. And we see it with the genocide in Gaza.”
“If the Trump administration returns, continues Ine Abdel Razel, it is possible that there are policies in relation to colonization, in relation to Israel's impunity, which are accelerated, reinforced. But fundamentally, on military aid, on unconditional aid, on support that remains bi-partisan in the American establishment, things are not going to change.”
There is also the whole question of Palestinians having American nationality. Fadi Quran, young activist, discusses the case of Shireen Abu Aqleh, this Al-Jazeera journalist, Palestinian American, killed on the ground in Jenin during an Israeli army raid in 2022. He also discusses the countless victims American Palestinians killed in Gaza since the start of the war: “These cases, among many others, show the double standards of Americans when these citizens are also Palestinians.” Ultimately, for the Palestinians, it is the support of the American people that matters more than the future tenant of the White House.
