Dr Aqel Taqaz assesses the implications for his people of the return to the White House of the man who “will make Israel great again”
Here, at the outset of 2025, there is no reason for the Palestinian people to believe that Donald Trump’s policy towards their national cause will differ greatly in his second term from his first, during which he: moved the United States’ embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; shuttered the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s office in Washington; gave Netanyahu the green light to annex parts of the West Bank to Israel; ceased US funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency; and introduced his so-called “deal of the century”, which envisioned far less than autonomy let alone independence for the Palestinian Authority.
Trump, who describes himself as “Israel’s best friend”, has gone even further, stating in his address to the Israeli-American Council in Washington, “We will make Israel great again.” He also opined that Israel needs to enlarge, presumably at the expense of further annexation of Palestinian territory in the West Bank and the building of more illegal settlements there. He has recognised Israel’s sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights and remained silent over the Israeli further encroachment into Syrian territory in the wake of the “ceasefire” in neighbouring Lebanon and the rapid overthrow of Bashar Al Assad by extremist forces supported by the US, Turkey, and Israel.
He has already cancelled sanctions imposed by the Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals for violence against Palestinians in the West Bank – a hark back to the position of his previous administration when then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo openly stated, on 19 November 2019, that Jewish settlements “do not violate international law.”
In light of the seismic geopolitical changes underway in the West Bank, due to the intensive settlement expansion, Trump will likely not hesitate in fulfilling his promise to Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson to support Israel to annex the West Bank, or parts of it, in return for her 100 million dollar donation to his election campaign – just as he kept his promise, during his first term, to her husband Sheldon Adelson to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in exchange for his 82 million dollar donation.
The new Trump administration will support Israel in ultimately continuing its bloody war in both the Gaza Strip and Lebanon; annexation of swathes of the West Bank, thereby preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state; and continuation of its war on UNRWA, with the ultimate aim of dealing a death blow to the Palestinian refugee issue as a prelude to doing the same to the Palestinian cause overall.
These hostile acts towards UNRWA and other institutions of the UN are of course in keeping with the recent moves by the Israeli Knesset to ban UNRWA and any dealings with the agency in Israel as well as the Tel Aviv government’s continual diplomatic attacks on the UN, even against its general secretary personally.
The US will be concerned to maintain pressure on various UN institutions, including the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, to avoid any censure or resolution against Israel for the atrocities and flagrant violations of international law it has brazenly perpetrated. Indeed, the nomination of ICJ President Nawaf Salam as a candidate to head the Lebanese government may have opened the way for Ugandan Julia Sebutinde, the only person to oppose the decision to condemn Israel, to replace him as a prelude to the cancelling of that condemnation.
As part of the renewed emphasis to see through and ratify the “Abraham Accords”, the Trump II administration will look to the Arab states in the region – Saudi Arabia foremost among them – to normalise their relations with Israel, citing the current ceasefire in Gaza as providing the basis for doing so. However, if states like Saudi Arabia continue to insist on a clear pathway towards a two-state solution as a precondition to said normalisation – by no means a given – there may need to be a reconfiguring of designs on the part of Washington.
Trump has nominated Mike Huckabee, an extreme Evangelical Zionist who supports the annexation of the West Bank, as ambassador to Israel. His defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, also “robustly supports” Israel.
When Trump talked about the need to stop the bloodshed in Gaza and support the ceasefire, he was not thinking about the blood of the Palestinians, who were not mentioned in his inaugural speech, but about the Israeli and American detainees in Gaza.
We should also not overlook Netanyahu’s repeated statements that he will return to the onslaught once the current phase of the ceasefire has elapsed and that he has the support of Trump to this end, which will come as no surprise to anyone remotely familiar with the behaviour and tendencies of either figure.
More than a century since the beginning of the bloody Zionist project in Palestine and the series of wars that Israel has fought, in most of which it has prevailed, it is abundantly clear that there is no military solution to this long-running conflict. The Palestinian people are determined and resolute to remain on their land as its rightful occupants and will not leave, even in the face of the genocide, massacres, and campaigns of annihilation perpetrated by the Israeli army and which have come to characterise the state of Israel since its very inception… Even as we witness the template adopted to such horrific effect in Gaza now begin to be applied in the occupied West Bank, especially in the besieged camps of Jenin and Tulkarem.
Even in the wake of the last 15 months, in the face of such horrors, we hold that there is no way out of the cycle of bloodshed and devastation except through a political solution that honours the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, namely the establishment of an independent and sovereign state within the borders as they stood on 4 June 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of return for refugees in accordance with UN Resolution 94 as well as all international resolutions pertaining to Palestine.
A return to the pattern of malaise in dealing with the Palestinian issue that has characterised the decades since the Oslo Accords will only lead to the continuation of the conflict.
More than 140 UN General Assembly members have recognised Palestine within its aforementioned borders as constituting a state under illegal occupation. Therefore, the ending of this occupation and establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestine is now urgent and imperative. And the international community can no longer afford to be blackmailed, held to ransom, and have its righteous efforts frustrated by an unrepresentative Zionist and Evangelical Zionist cabal with such scant regard for international law and norms and with Trump as its emblematic figurehead.
The international solidarity movement with the Palestinian people during Israel’s genocidal onslaught in Gaza has more than proven that it can play a major role in exposing atrocities, war criminals, as well as changing public opinion around the world, not least in Europe and the US. This movement has provided encouragement and solace to the Palestinian people during their darkest hours. And we are confident and hopeful that this movement will continue to play its role in eventually realising justice not only in Palestine but throughout our troubled world.
On our part, we, the Palestinian people, remain unwavering in our conviction and resolve and will continue with our noble and righteous struggle to the very end… To liberation!
: Dr Aqel Taqaz is co-ordinator for international relations of the Palestinian People’s Party and a member of the secretariat of the World Peace Council
The views expressed in the articles published on this website do not necessarily represent those of Liberation.
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This first appeared in Liberation journal
Image: Tate Paviour (https://tatepaviour.com/)
