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In congratulating Donald Trump for his “huge” election victory, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s social media posts were full of excitement.
Calling it “history’s greatest comeback!”, Netanyahu predicted “a powerful recommitment” to the U.S.-Israel alliance.
Netanyahu has reason to be pleased. His government has received more than $18 billion US in American military aid since the start of its year-long wars in Gaza and Lebanon and an escalating conflict with Iran.
Now, he sees the man he once called “Israel’s best friend” returning to the White House, with even more help expected.
Last month, President Joe Biden mused that Netanyahu could be “trying to influence the election” by delaying a ceasefire deal with Hamas in Gaza. The current conflict was sparked by Hamas-led militants attacking Israel on Oct 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping some 250 others.
Since then, Israel’s ground and air attacks have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and reduced much of the territory to rubble.
lon Pinkas, Israel’s former top diplomat in New York, told CBC in Tel Aviv that Netanyahu “basically wanted the war to be prolonged and to lead into the [U.S.] election.”
It was a way to avoid dealing with Vice-President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, Pinkas says. Israelis widely see her as unsupportive of Israel, because of comments she made questioning civilian casualties and criticizing a shortage of humanitarian aid for Palestinians in Gaza.
Continued fighting until after the election may also be an attempt to hand Trump a gift by proving that the new president can “stop wars” in hours, as he claimed in his victory speech early Wednesday morning.
Trump has reportedly told Netanyahu he wants Israel’s conflicts ended by the time he is inaugurated on Jan. 20. But on a phone call two weeks ago, he’s quoted as telling the prime minister to “do what you have to do” to defend Israel.
What Netanyahu wants from Trump
The incoming president is notoriously unpredictable, says Khaled Elgindy, an analyst at Washington’s Middle East Institute, and Netanyahu is likely counting on getting something he wants more: freedom to fight as he pleases, with Washington’s support.
“If both [the Gaza and Lebanon] wars are still raging and there’s an imminent threat of Iran, then, yes, I would expect Donald Trump will give Netanyahu wide latitude to continue with his approach based on his timetable and his priorities indefinitely,” said Elgindy.
Unless, he says, the danger rises of the U.S. being pulled into an all-out conflict with Iran. Trump has shown himself to be reluctant to fight expensive, distant wars on behalf of others.
“Will he put his foot down then?” asked Elgindy, who believes the only way to avoid an Iranian conflict is to end fighting in Gaza and Lebanon. “Will he say enough is enough?”
Netanyahu may already be anticipating a freer hand. On election day, as America was voting and politicians were distracted, he went ahead and fired Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
Aaron David Miller says Donald Trump’s pro-Israel foreign policy as U.S. president was like ‘a sugar high’ for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It was a move the Biden administration had warned Netanyahu against.
Gallant is widely respected in Israel as a former general and valued by Washington as a moderating influence on hardliners in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. He has also supported a deal with Hamas to bring home some 100 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
But he is Netanyahu’s political adversary. Gallant denounced Israel’s current “moral darkness” in his parting message.
Last March, angry public protests forced Netanyahu to reinstate Gallant after he fired him the first time. Last night, demonstrators were back out on the streets within hours.
Trump ‘an ally … unconditionally,’ says setter council
But while many Israelis don’t support Netanyahu, they overwhelmingly share his feelings for Trump. Almost two-thirds of Israelis told a pollster before the election they think he is better for Israel’s interests, compared to only 13 per cent who preferred Harris.
“She might say she supports Israel, but it doesn’t look like it,” Avner Cohen, a Tel Aviv resident, told CBC News. “She supports the embargo on Israel. She doesn’t want to send us more weapons.”
Because of Netanyahu’s campaigning and unfavourable media coverage of Harris, Israelis have been convinced that U.S. Democrats are “dangerous” for Israel, perhaps ready to “stop military, financial and political support,” said Dahlia Scheindlin, a Tel Aviv-based political analyst and pollster. This, despite the Biden administration’s record military help in the current conflict.
People in the Middle East are watching the U.S. election amid heightened regional tensions. Polling suggests most Israelis want to see Donald Trump elected president, and see Kamala Harris as an unknown variable.
On the other hand, she says, Trump’s unpredictability appeals to Israelis.
“They understand that kind of personality intuitively, and they don’t think there’s anything so terribly wrong with it,” Scheindlin said.
Israel’s settler movement is especially happy with Trump’s victory. It’s eager to expand communities in the occupied West Bank that are considered illegal by much of the international community, and even to move into devastated Gaza. Today, the main Yeshiva settler council said that in Trump, they expect “an ally standing unconditionally beside us.”
Some of the council’s settler allies have been sanctioned by the Biden administration. Trump, on the other hand, used his first term to draft plans to make their West Bank settlements part of Israel. He was also the first U.S. president to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, something most countries have refused to do.
What will it mean for Gaza?
At a makeshift coffee shop in the Gaza city of Khan Younis, Palestinians gathered to watch coverage of the U.S. election on Wednesday morning.
The feeling among people in Gaza is mixed. While some believe president-elect Trump will maintain the same level of support for Israel and its war goals in Gaza, some feel he could be the reason the war ends.
Safwat Al-Qahouki, 36, says he thinks Trump will be able to “pressure” Netenyahu to stop the fighting.
“Trump will now do something Biden failed at: he will stop the war,” Al-Qahouki told freelance videographer Mohamed El Saife, who is working for CBC News in an area where foreign journalists have been barred by Israel.
People in Khan Younis, Gaza, offered early reaction Wednesday after former president Donald Trump declared victory in the U.S. election.
But not everyone felt so positive about the results of the U.S. vote. Khan Younis resident Abu Osama Naim, 43, said Trump “will change our Palestinian situation for the worse.”
Naim sees the vote as a repudiation of support for a two-state solution. Without a strong American push for a recognized Palestinian state next to an Israeli one, Naim said, “the war will continue, destruction will continue and we as Palestinian people will not get more than this.”
In northern Gaza right now, “this” means an active war zone where some 100,000 people are trapped in the largest traditional refugee camp in the territory, Jabalia, as well as the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun — an area United Nations aid organizations describe as “apocalyptic.”
“The entire Palestinian population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence,” they said in a statement.
Earlier this week, the head of the main UN agency helping Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said Israel has scaled back the entry of aid trucks into the Gaza Strip to an average of 30 trucks a day, the lowest in a long time. Few of them reach the north.
Israeli troops say they are trying to root out Hamas fighters who have reestablished themselves in the north — months after Israel declared the militia “defeated” in that area.
Two weeks ago, Israel began shelling one of the few clinics still operating, Kamal Adwan hospital, killing 15-year-old Ibrahim Abu Safiya. His father, a pediatrician and the hospital’s director, has remained despite the fighting.
“Almost all the doors have been broken down, and most of the windows shattered,” he said in a text exchange with CBC News. “This has instilled a sense of terror and fear among the patients.” He said the two doctors left don’t have the medical supplies to help.
Biden still in charge, for now
Still, the next two and a half months may yet bring surprises.
The Biden administration is in charge for now. It warned Israel in a letter in mid-October that if there isn’t a “dramatic increase in humanitarian assistance” into Gaza within 30 days, it risks losing U.S. weapons funding.
This week, with that deadline approaching, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Israel had not turned things around.
At the moment, they would get a “fail,” Miller said. “The results are not good enough today.”