2024-07-19 22:24:37
Republicans in the US this week adopted their political platform at their national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with the platform setting out a number of policies that Donald Trump will pursue if he wins a second presidential term in November’s election.
The new Republican platform mentions Israel once, compared to 19 mentions in the 2016 version. However, Trump has repeatedly expressed his position on the war in the Gaza Strip and has criticized current US President Joe Biden for his policies on the conflict. Additionally, during his presidency, the Republican leader made significant policy moves toward Israel and the Middle East region. This gives grounds for making predictions about the possible changes in American policy towards Israel that would occur if Trump were to be at the helm of the White House again.
At the start of the Gaza war, Trump criticized President Joe Biden’s response, but said little about what he would have done in his place. In recent months, Trump accused Israel of “losing the PR war” and advised Netanyahu to “get it over with.” During his debate with Biden on June 27, the Republican leader called the current US president a “bad Palestinian” and indicated that the October 7 Hamas attack would not have happened if he had been in the White House, the Washington-based recalled Al Monitor news site.
According to the results of a public opinion poll conducted this month by the Jewish Institute for Public Policy, published on Wednesday, most Jews in Israel prefer the upcoming US presidential election to be won by Trump rather than Biden, writes the Jerusalem Post. Israelis surveyed who support Trump amount to 51%, and 35% expressed a preference for Biden.
Extremely strong support for Trump is demonstrated by voters of far-right parties in Netanyahu’s coalition government. He is preferred by 82% of Likud voters, 94% of Shas voters and 87% of Religious Zionist Party voters.
Highlights of Trump’s Israel Policy During His Presidency
Netanyahu angered Trump by congratulating Biden after the 2020 presidential election, The New York Times reported. At the time, the Republican leader viewed the gesture as disloyal, and his relationship with Netanyahu remained strained for years. But while he was at the head of the White House, he maintained a stable relationship with Netanyahu, notes the New York Times.
In the course of his presidency, Trump changed some lines of American foreign policy that Washington had followed for decades. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the US embassy there. Contrary to international law, his government claimed that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, conquered by Israel in 1967, were not illegal, recalls the Irish Times.
Trump also closed the US consulate in East Jerusalem, which served Palestinians, as well as the Palestinian mission in Washington. It recognized the extension of Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights. In 2018, Trump withdrew the US from the deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
In January 2020, Trump announced his “deal of the century” for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Although the plan claimed to be based on the two-state solution, Israel would have annexed the Jordan River Valley, or 30 percent of the West Bank. In addition, the deal gave the green light to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the settlements, built illegally after the 1967 war, in which about 600,000 Jews currently live, the Guardian recalled.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the plan “the slap of the century.”
The greatest achievement of the former president in the region were the so-called “Abraham Accords”, which in 2020 normalized diplomatic relations between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. In speeches to Jewish donors and activists, Trump indicated that he was on the verge of including Iran in the accords, even though during his tenure he strongly opposed Tehran and in 2020 ordered the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who was the head of the elite the “Quds” unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the “Guardian” also writes.
What exactly does the new Republican Party program on relations with Israel envisage?
Section 10 of this week’s GOP policy platform is titled “Returning to Peace Through Strength” and the position on Israel and the Middle East is described in two sentences: “We will support Israel and seek peace in the Middle East. We will restore our network of alliances in the region to ensure a future marked by peace, stability and prosperity”.
At the same time, the program also includes domestic policy points that are directly or indirectly related to the topic. Republicans, for example, promise to defend the US with the Iron Dome air defense system used by Israel. The document also calls for resuming Trump’s ban on citizens from Muslim countries such as Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen entering the US, and Trump has said he will ban Palestinian refugees from Gaza.
In addition, Republicans assured voters in their platform that the party “will deport pro-Hamas radicals” and make US college campuses “safe and patriotic again,” referring to the anti-war demonstrations in Gaza that have rocked American universities.
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, said yesterday in an interview with The Times of Israel on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee that he was not worried about the isolationist wing in the Republican Party and that Trump’s election to a second term as president would likely has less influence on Israel than on Ukraine.
“There is indeed an isolationist wing in the party, but from all the signals I’m getting in the course of my conversations here, it will have less impact on Israel. It could impact Ukraine,” Herzog pointed out.