Trump's Presidency and the Palestine–Israel issue

We have previously discussed the likely effects of Donald Trump's election to the US presidency on US-EU relations. Today I will try to address another dimension that concerns both Turkey's foreign policy and world peace very closely.

Since World War II, almost every US president has either promised to find a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli question during his presidential campaign or term, or has tried to bring one about.

The Oslo Process had made progress after initiatives taken by the US. George W. Bush also made attempts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after becoming president but could not succeed. Obama, who placed special emphasis on this issue during his presidential campaign, subsequently undertook various initiatives to bring it to a resolution.

It can be said that Obama failed to put forward an effective agenda on this problem during the first term of his presidency. The

Operation Cast Lead

that Israel launched just days before Obama took office was influential in the course the process took. Although Obama was highly critical of Israel's Palestine policy, he refrained from commenting on this Operation on the grounds that he had not yet officially taken office. Nevertheless, perhaps because he sensed an effort / ill intent on the part of the Israeli administration to present him with a fait accompli before he had even begun his term, Obama did not pay an official visit to Israel during his first term.

Attempts were made to conduct the Palestinian-Israeli Peace Process from Cairo. All that is remembered from the meetings held is the photograph served to the media, which was published in the Egyptian press with Hosni Mubarak photoshopped in front of Barack Obama.

Obama made a much more ambitious entry into his second term. His strategy was to take this issue off the agenda of US foreign policy by achieving a definitive peace between Palestine and Israel, and thereby to ease the pressure of Israel on US foreign policy. For this reason he visited both Israel and Palestine. By visiting the graves of Yitzhak Rabin in Israel and Yasser Arafat in Palestine, he called for a return to the spirit of Oslo. He brought the parties around a table, even if by force.

Not everything was going well, but perhaps, in Obama's view, everything did not need to go well. What mattered was that the negotiations continue and somehow reach a conclusion. To that end he exerted intense diplomatic pressure on the parties and made serious efforts to keep the process from collapsing.

However, after Fatah and Hamas agreed to form a national consensus government, the Israeli side found the pretext it had been looking for.

Israel walked away from the table, claiming that Fatah was trying to make Israel deal with a terrorist organization. Thus the goal of ending the Palestinian-Israeli dispute was shelved completely during the Obama era.

The collapse of the peace negotiating table also seriously affected US Middle East policy, because Obama had built his Middle East strategy to a significant extent on Palestinian-Israeli peace. Had this been achieved, the US would have gained great prestige in the Middle East and would have been able to resolve many issues without resorting to economic or military measures.

The bill for the collapse of this strategy, which rested on a hope rather than a policy, was heavy: the US suffered a serious loss of influence in the region, and the places the US vacated were filled by terrorist organizations such as DAESH and PYD-YPG, and by Hezbollah.

During his election campaign Donald Trump also made various statements on the Palestinian-Israeli issue. These were statements that would generally be welcomed by Israel. For example, he promised that the US would move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. On the other hand, his saying that he would tear up the nuclear agreement signed with Iran created great satisfaction in Israel. Israel's Education Minister Naftali Bennett, apparently inspired by Trump's inability to restrain his momentum, went so far as to claim that, with the election result in Trump's favor, the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state had vanished.

At a time when the effects of Trump's election were being debated in Israeli public opinion, a document published by the newspaper Haaretz showed the caution in the Israeli state's approach to Trump's election. According to the document, Trump would follow Obama's path in the Middle East and continue the pause in US military interventions. Moreover, according to this document, Trump's campaign statements should not be taken too seriously, because someone who looks at issues in terms of profit and loss cannot be expected to be very consistent.

Despite everything, it can be said that Trump's election created great expectations in Israel, especially among the extreme right/racist segments. If the government falls in line with this extreme right/racist influence, hopes for Palestinian-Israeli peace may be lost entirely. The government's announcement that the Ramat Shlomo settlement in East Jerusalem, which had earlier been declared frozen, is back on the agenda, and that a 500-unit housing project on a 76-dunam site is being reactivated, is one of the strong signals in this direction.

The truth of the matter for Israel is this: if it wants to exist and to maintain its security permanently, it is obliged to see that it has no way other than living together with the Palestinians.

This, first of all, requires seriously considering at last withdrawing from the Palestinian lands it occupied in 1967.

Otherwise the pot will keep boiling and Israeli society will acquire a more paranoid mindset with each passing day,

and however much it imagines that it will be safe from the fire burning around it, the fire that the sparks of this blaze will kindle will burn it to the ground as well

.