The amount of aid reaching Gaza has fallen to an 11-month low according to Israeli figures. And the hijacking, by an armed Palestinian gang, of a convoy of 109 trucks on November 16 has exacerbated the situation. Food prices are soaring and parts of the enclave, where Israeli troops are battling Hamas fighters, are believed to be already experiencing famine.
The administration of outgoing US president, Joe Biden, has been consistent in its political and military support for Israel and its war against Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and of course Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Iran. But all the while Biden has urged moderation.
Speaking at the G20 this week, Biden repeated his message that “Israel has the right to defend itself after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust” – but he stressed that “how it defends itself – even as Hamas cruelly hides among civilians – matters a great deal”.
Judging by the first appointments made by the US president-elect Donald Trump to his foreign policy team, the tone of US support for Israel is likely to change.
Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has long been associated with the Christian evangelical right, which wholeheartedly supports Jewish sovereignty over the West Bank.
Huckabee made his position clear in a 2017 interview with CNN, saying: “There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria [the territory’s biblical name]. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighbourhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
The proposed secretary of state, Republican senator Marco Rubio, is on the record as being against a ceasefire in Gaza. He told journalists recently that “I want them [Israel] to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on. These people are vicious animals who did horrifying crimes.”
A month out from the election, on October 5, Biden appeared at a White House press briefing and commented on speculation that Netanyahu’s apparent unwillingness to agree a ceasefire was motivated by US politics: “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know – but I’m not counting on that,” he said, adding that: “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none,” he said. “And I think [Netanyahu] should remember that.”
Netanyahu must view the election result and Trump’s selection of strong supporters of his government as vindication of an approach that now sees Israel, militarily at least, in the ascendant. Israel’s offensive in northern Gaza shows no sign of slowing. And, as more and more people are forced southwards, a new motive for the continuing military operation appears to be coming into sight.
Pressure from the right
Many on the political right – including members of Netanyahu’s government – are now advocating for reoccupation of the north of the Gaza strip by Jewish settlers. These settlers regard the 2005 decision to evacuate the Gaza strip not just as a strategic mistake, but as “hillul hashem”, a blasphemy against God.
And, just as IDF outposts in the West Bank have often been the used as the sites for the construction of settlements, many now suspect a similar pattern will be repeated in at least the northern half of the Gaza strip as its 2 million Palestinian inhabitants are compressed ever more in an ever decreasing space.
For the two most notable Religious Zionists in Netanyahu’s government, interior minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, the election of Trump is the gift that will keep on giving. For them and their power base, full annexation of what they refer to as “Judea and Samaria” remains a mitzvah – a commandment that must be fulfilled if the long-awaited messianic era is to be hastened and their vision of Zionism realised.
In Trump, Smotrich and Ben Gvir believe they have the international backing to achieve this – regardless of the wider consequences for Israel’s claim to be both Jewish and democratic. For most observers, full annexation would effectively mark Israel as an apartheid state – unless full citizenship with equal political rights were to be conferred on all Palestinians. This is unlikely.
Netanyahu’s calculations
Netanyahu knows this. But the changing dynamics of Israel’s domestic politics means he is no longer so reliant on Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. The addition to his coalition of a small bloc under Gideon Sa’ar has given him a greater margin of support.
Recent polls also show his approval rating has rallied considerably since Israel’s incursion into Lebanon to take on Hezbollah. Along with a recent fillip in his poll ratings and an opposition that remains divided, Netanyahu appears to be in an unassailable position.
EPA-EFE/Gripas Yuri/pool
Still, he also knows that Trump is a transactional president elected on a platform to end US involvement in foreign conflicts. Netanyahu also knows that the Gaza conflict has – for now at least – put paid to any prospect of the normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, something that Trump counts as one of the foreign policy achievements of his first administration.
Calling Israel’s military actions in Gaza genocidal, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman has made any moves towards a formal peace deal with Israel conditional on meaningful steps being taken by the Jewish state and its ally the US towards Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu will know that any move in that direction would fracture his coalition. But he will also suspect that the Saudis and other Gulf monarchies will try to leverage the influence they also have in Washington to put diplomatic pressure on Trump.
Reading Trump’s intentions is not for the fainthearted. But even so, Netanyahu will think the incoming US president is likely to afford him a period of political grace to conclude his wars. Much, of course, remains uncertain. But as ever it will be the Palestinian people who bear the heaviest burden.
As well as lacking effective leadership in Gaza or on the West Bank, they can look forward to scant support from the Arab world. Now they face an Israeli premier in victory mode and the prospect of a US president prepared to go all the way to support him.
