Donald Trump re-elected, for Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu it is also a victory in the war in Gaza

UNITED STATES – Benjamin Netanyahu who “prayed” for a re-election of Donald Trump can savor. This Wednesday, November 6, the Republican was re-elected to the White House, four years after leaving it, by defeating Democrat Kamala Harris. And the undertows of this red wave which is sweeping the United States will be felt throughout the world, and particularly in the Middle East.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who has just fired his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, was exultant this Wednesday morning upon learning of the re-election of Donald Trump. He felt that his “ “Historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America.” The Israeli prime minister's entourage said later in the day that he was the first foreign leader to speak with the winner and that the two men had “a warm and cordial exchange”.

During the campaign, Donald Trump had apparently spared the goats and the cabbage, praising his almost daily conversations with the Israeli leader and their “very good relationship”but also capitalizing on the anger of Arab Americans against what was perceived as a blank check from the Biden administration to Israel. With the crest line for the Republican leader, the promise of “bring peace to Earth”.

Support for the Israeli operation in Gaza

Behind these grandiloquent words, Donald Trump, who still wanted to screw the Arabs in 2016 and who wishes to reintroduce the “Muslim ban”, has never had a single word for the suffering of the Gazans. Last August, he simply estimated that “the deaths must stop” while calling on Israel to achieve a quick victory. Like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, he has always insisted on Israel's right to defend itself. And he even mocked his Democratic opponent's calls for a ceasefire, assuring that he “would only give Hamas time to reconstitute itself and launch a new attack of the type of that of October 7”.

Peace but rather by force therefore. And above all with ideas in mind. In the middle of a press conference last October, Donald Trump indulged in some real estate daydreams, imagining that Gaza would become, after its reconstruction, a new « Monaco ». The agenda no longer appears to be to pressure Israel to facilitate humanitarian aid to Gaza as when Washington threatened to limit arms deliveries.

As for Hamas, it contented itself with a press release to say that it will judge the new American president in office “of its positions and its behavior in practice towards the Palestinian people, their legitimate rights and their just cause”.

“Things are not going to change” for the Palestinians

But the voice of the Palestinians risks having little echo in this new mandate as, during the previous one, Donald Trump multiplied the gestures in favor of Israel: he moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, cut American funds to UNRWA from 2018 and above all recognized Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. It was also he who put an end to opposition to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “ Trump's policies in the region have long aligned with those of Israel's most extreme supporters. regarding the annexation of the West Bank, notes in this regard the specialist in American diplomacy Akbar Shahid Ahmed for Le HuffPost US.

«[Les Palestiniens] have not seen anything change in the four years of the Biden administration. So, clearly, in fact, I think that if there is a Trump administration that returns, it is possible that there will be policies in relation to colonization, in relation to the impunity of Israel, which will be accelerated , reinforced. But things aren't going to change.” Ines Abdel Razek, director of the Palestinian Institute for Public Diplomacy, said recently on France Inter.

The Iranian question

If facing Hezbollah, Donald Trump has more or less the same approach (“let it be resolved quickly”), the Lebanese question is more complex because it is entangled with the Iranian issue. In the country, the Republican left very bad memories, which were revived this Wednesday morning with the fall of the Iranian rial, to its historic low against the dollar.

This is because Tehran is struggling to recover from the hammer blow inflicted in 2018. Subject to significant international sanctions, Iran signed an agreement in 2015 with the major world powers who agreed to loosen the grip in exchange for a limitation of the Iranian nuclear program. The text, validated by Barack Obama, was torpedoed three years later by Donald Trump, who then reimposed sanctions. With the result of galloping inflation for the Iranians. His first mandate was also marked in January 2020 by his decision to have the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani killed in Iraq.

Four years later, there is no question of releasing the pressure. For the Heritage Foundation, a hyperconservative lobby that weighs in the Trumpist sphere, facing Iran “appeasement is no longer an option”. To the point of engaging the United States militarily alongside Israel? If during the campaign, the billionaire went so far as to encourage Benjamin Netanyahu to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities – advice which was not followed – the Republican has always been reluctant to send American troops. Furthermore, his campaign entourage includes many “isolationists who no longer want Washington to be the leader of the free world or to participate in international alliances”, estimates Nadav Tamir, a former diplomat stationed in the United States.

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