Marco Rubio, the president-elect’s nominee for secretary of state, has vowed to lift sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers and expel ‘pro-Hamas’ people from the US.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has been consistently inconsistent on key policy issues, such as immigration, global trade, nuclear weapons, Covid and Israel’s war on Gaza.
In the run-up to the presidential elections, he successfully courted Jewish and Muslim voters simultaneously by playing both sides of the fence.
But his staunchly pro-Israel cabinet picks are stripping the anti-war veneer from the incoming administration at a faster pace than previously expected.
It will be the “most pro-Israel administration” in US history, said Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, at the Senate confirmation hearing on January 16.
More specifically, Rubio vowed to roll back the sanctions that the Biden administration slapped in eight separate rounds throughout 2024 against Israeli settlers and entities for wreaking “extremist settler violence in the [occupied] West Bank” and causing intense human suffering among Palestinians.
Experts believe Rubio’s statement reflects the shape of the things to come.
“I think those punitive measures [against Israeli settlers] will be lifted,” Yousef Alhelou, a London-based political analyst from Gaza, tells TRT World.
The US sanctioned as many as 17 individuals and 16 entities in Israel last year. The sanctions restrict their ability to transact through formal banking channels.
Rubio’s policy statement is significant because Trump himself has so far steered clear of publicly committing to a reversal of the sanctions regime.
“It’s too early to predict if [Trump is] going to be extra pro-Israel or if he’s going to [maintain] a balance between Palestine and Israel. But experience tells us that Trump is ready for Israel. He favoured [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. He gave him many things,” Alhelou says.
Trump’s nominee for the US envoy to Israel Mike Huckabee is “staunchly pro-Israel” and supports Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
Rubio was also categorical in announcing the upcoming deportation of pro-Hamas people from the US. “If you apply for a visa to come into the United States and… you’re a supporter of Hamas, we wouldn’t let you in.”
The statement by the secretary of state-designate may have more substance than similarly phrased provocations in the past because the election cycle is over and the Republican Party is switching into the governance mode.
“I don’t rule out the possibility that more punitive measures will be imposed on the Palestinian side to revoke their visas or their residency or to expel them [from the US],” Alhelou says.
Friend or foe?
Though Israel and Hamas have agreed to a ceasefire deal beginning January 19, Tel Aviv’s relentless assault on Palestinians has devastated Gaza and killed nearly 47,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in the last 14 months.
A brief ceasefire in May 2024 did little to bring succour to the war-weary Palestinians.
The Biden administration repeatedly issued stern-sounding statements telling Israel to stop killing innocent civilians. But Washington never followed these statements with any acts of diplomatic support for the Palestinians.
US spending on Israeli military and related operations in the Middle East since October 7, 2023, has been nearly $23 billion, substantially higher than in any other year since Washington began granting military aid to Israel in 1959.
But Trump has been no friend of the Palestinians either.
Worried more about Israel “losing the PR war” than the staggering loss of Palestinian lives, the president-elect has unreservedly criticised anti-war protesters demonstrating on university campuses across the US.
It was under Trump’s presidency that the Arab-Israeli normalisation process revived in earnest as part of the Abraham Accords, bilateral agreements that Israel signed with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020.
In a break with official US policy for decades, the Trump administration also recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and shifted the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the city that most countries consider part of the occupied Palestinian territories.
To the delight of Israelis, Trump’s position on the two-state solution has also shifted away from decades-long US policy, with the president-elect saying he isn’t sure about its viability.
Yet Trump carried the majority of Muslim votes in the 2024 election as he repeatedly vowed to end Israel’s war on Gaza at all costs. His positions oscillated between urging Israel to “get back to peace and stop killing people” to “all hell will break out” if Hamas does not release Israeli hostages.
Trump and Israel’s far-right
Trump was quick to claim credit for the long-awaited ceasefire deal in Gaza even though the agreement broadly aligns with the proposal that the Biden administration floated in May 2024.
But it was the president-elect who injected a sense of urgency into the on-again, off-again peace talks.
“Far from turning up the heat on Israel, Trump telegraphed a further embrace of its positions during his 2024 campaign,” wrote Yair Rosenberg in US publication The Atlantic.
Earlier, far-right members within Netanyahu’s coalition were the biggest obstacle to any peace deal. They threatened to bring down Netanyahu’s government if he accepted any ceasefire arrangement that left Hamas in a position of power in Gaza.
However, the same radical elements came on board as they set their eyes on “bigger prizes”, such as the annexation of the occupied West Bank, Rosenberg says.
They acceded to the arrangement in order to stay in Trump’s good graces as he assumed office, he adds.
Ramzy Baroud, an author and a Palestinian political analyst, says Palestine will “erupt in counteraction” once again if Trump builds on the legacy of his first term without addressing the minimal aspirations of the Palestinian people.
“After all that Gaza has endured in its struggle for freedom, Palestinians will not be overlooked, dismissed, or erased from the political equation,” he tells TRT World.
C. TRT World
