Trump isn’t waiting for the world — he’s already taken power
The returning president created the Hamas-Israel ceasefire and will transform the globe for better ... or for worse.
“If those hostages aren’t back, I don’t want to hurt your negotiation, if they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East. It will not be good for Hamas, it will not be good for anyone. They should’ve given them back a long time ago. They should never have taken them. If the deal isn’t done before I take office, which is now going to be two weeks, all hell will break out in the Middle East.”
– President-elect Donald Trump, January 7
When Donald Trump was president the first time, he produced more peace agreements between Israel and its Arab and North African neighbours than any previous US president. He hasn’t yet taken office this time but Trump already produced a ceasefire deal.
The ceasefire deal seems to have survived a series of late scares. But Trump’s election has transformed the dynamics of the Middle East.
The world is waiting for Trump to take office. Trump isn’t waiting for the world. He already has taken power. There’s lots more to come.
Two factors have transformed the Middle East, one created by Benjamin Netanyahu, one by Trump.
US President Joe Biden first proposed almost an identical ceasefire agreement back in May. The Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, had his problems with it.
However, as US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, said: “In the last five or six months, it was Hamas that wasn’t willing to negotiate. Hamas was undoubtedly the main obstacle.”
Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, said in a farewell interview that every time Hamas saw Israel under pressure, diplomatically isolated, with distance between Jerusalem and Washington, it pulled back from a deal. It wanted to prolong Israel’s discomfort, hoping international pressure would defeat Israel in a way that Hamas itself couldn’t.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar instructed his negotiators to hold out for an agreement that involved permanent Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and provisions for Sinwar’s own safety.
Netanyahu had other ideas. The Israel Defence Forces finally killed Sinwar last October. That shook Hamas. Worse was to come. Israel dismantled or destroyed much of the so-called Axis of Resistance, the Iranian-sponsored Middle East terror network of which Hamas was part.
It started with Lebanon’s Hezbollah. In a series of assassinations, plus technical, bombing and missile attacks, Israel devastated Hezbollah’s military capabilities, killing its leaders and destroying its missiles.
Meanwhile Turkey supported a group of Syrian Islamists who deposed Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Israel had so weakened Hezbollah it couldn’t come to Assad’s rescue.
Iran last year twice launched missile attacks against Israel, something it had never done before. In retaliation, Israel destroyed most of Iran’s air defences. Tehran’s nuclear facilities are thus more vulnerable to being bombed than they have been for many years.
This regional revolution hurt Hamas. It struck Israel hoping to isolate the Jewish state and start a region-wide war against it involving Iran and all its proxies. The only Iranian proxy still firing at Israel are the Yemeni Houthis.
Trump was the other revolutionary change.
Showing that sometimes populist reaction embodies more wisdom than elite diplomacy and pollie waffle, Trump understood that in a conflict between a savage, Islamist terrorist cult and Israel, the region’s only democracy, he should choose Israel.
Biden made essentially the same choice, backing Israel from day one. But Biden was bedevilled by anti-Israel sentiment in the left of his own party and its activist base and youth wings. The left labelled Biden “Genocide Joe” for supplying Israel with weapons.
Biden’s diplomatic style is antique and no longer effective. He’s multilateralist, feeble, wishy-washy. He doesn’t scare anybody. The idea of the liberal international rules-based order has broken down because huge players such as China, Russia, Iran and others don’t abide by its rules and norms.
Further, many Western governments have become so woke they’re no longer trying to enforce basic human rights but to universalise California gender ideology. No one in Asia, not many people in eastern Europe, pretty well no-one in Africa, signs up to the San Francisco social model.
Defenders of the rules-based order are also now ineffectual in their methods. Biden wasted an entire term trying to entice Iran into a multilateral nuclear deal. Disastrously, this empowered Iran by freeing up money that, under Trump, was frozen under the sanctions regime.
Biden’s instinct in every conflict is to de-escalate. But some conflicts must be won.
The same feebleness is evident in the Albanese government, which condemned Israel even for the exploding telephone pagers with which it attacked Hezbollah commanders when Hezbollah, a proscribed terrorist organisation under Australian law, was relentlessly firing missiles at Israel.
Trump’s style, purpose and demeanour are the polar opposite to Biden. In his first term Trump was often crude, he needlessly trash-talked alliances and he did some counter-productive things. But overall his foreign policy was much more successful than Biden’s, especially in the Middle East.
The rules-based order had life only when overwhelming American power mandated it. Now, everywhere except Europe, nations are generally more comfortable dealing with Trump’s straightforward interests-based approach.
One of America’s national interests is its allies. But in Trumpworld, allies must show that they add value, that they pull their weight in defence, for example (something Australia conspicuously doesn’t do).
Trump scares Iran which, as veteran Israeli strategic analyst Ehud Yaari explains in an important piece in The Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, is painfully rethinking the cost-benefit equation of investing so much in all these proxy forces, most of which have recently suffered setbacks and want a lot more Iranian money.
Trump also scares Hamas. His whole administration is going to be much more supportive of Israel. This undercuts the Hamas idea of isolating Israel diplomatically. You cannot be isolated if the US is your strong ally. It undercuts any idea that Israel might be denied some weapons. And it further undercuts the idea that Israel will be subjected to US pressure not to react if Hamas or Hezbollah breaks a ceasefire.
Trump’s commitment to Israel gives him a lot of influence in Jerusalem, as evident in Trump’s Middle East envoy, Florida property magnate Steve Witkoff, convincing Netanyahu to go for the ceasefire.
The people Trump has chosen for his cabinet, agency heads and the like, are a mixture of four broad categories: mainstream conservative Republicans; Make America Great Again, America-first nationalists; super-wealthy friends of Trump; and of course a quota of gargoyles and nut jobs.
Trump’s first pick for attorney-general, Matt Gaetz, was the stellar gargoyle. He was so spectacularly unsuitable even the Republican Senate would have rejected him. He withdrew his nomination and sensibly resigned from congress.
These different tribes often have conflicting policy agendas. Elon Musk favours skilled immigration, Steve Bannon opposes almost all immigration. Trump intentionally picks conflicting advisers to create policy tension. He gets to adjudicate every dispute. Messy, but potentially effective.
Yet in each of the main policy areas, there are a few core Trump positions everyone holds. Everyone on Trump’s economics team supports lower taxes. Everyone concerned with immigration wants to seal the southern border and stop illegal immigrants.
In foreign policy, everyone is an ardent Israel supporter. Former Florida senator Marco Rubio, set to become secretary of state, a completely orthodox conservative Republican, said in his Senate confirmation testimony: “How can any nation-state on the planet coexist side-by-side with a group of savages like Hamas?”
Trump’s pick for defence secretary, the much married former Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth, who also had some time in the military but has no political or administrative experience and represents a completely different corner of Trumpworld from Rubio, told his Senate confirmation hearing: “I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas.”
Trump will never come under pressure from within his administration or party to undermine, isolate or abandon Israel. Trump’s disposition, plus the geo-strategic transformation that Israel’s military campaigns have brought about, give Netanyahu greater political room to manoeuvre and mean he can contemplate taking the risks the hostage deal entails.
In the first phase of the proposed hostage deal, across six weeks, Israel gets only 33 of its hostages back, and some of these may be dead. It gets mainly the elderly, the sick and women. In return, it has to release 1000 Palestinian prisoners, including many serving life sentences. Those who have engaged in terrorism will not be released back into the West Bank or Gaza but offered exile in whatever nearby Arab or Muslim nation will take them.
Israel has done these prisoner deals before. Sinwar, who put together the whole October 7 atrocity, was released from an Israeli jail in just such a prisoner-hostage swap.
During this first phase of the ceasefire the IDF will withdraw to the edge of Gaza and get out of most of the heavily populated areas. Israel will get its 33 hostages only a few people at a time. There will be much more aid flowing into Gaza for as long as the ceasefire holds.
In phase two of the ceasefire agreement, Israel is meant to withdraw more fully from Gaza. At that stage Hamas still may have another 60 or 65 Israeli hostages. It’s meant to gradually release these people, or at least those of them who are still alive. Probably more than 30 are already dead.
This is the only way Israel can get some of its people back. Whenever Israeli forces get near to hostages, Hamas kills them. So Netanyahu presumably feels that with Trump’s backing he can get this deal done and at least recover some dozens of living Israelis.
Analytically, it’s very difficult to see phase two, much less phase three, which is meant to produce permanent peace and complete Israeli withdrawal, ever coming about.
In phase two, Israel is supposed to hand over complete control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between southern Gaza and Egypt. It’s across this border that the lion’s share of smuggling into Gaza, especially of weapons, historically has taken place. If Israel doesn’t control that corridor, it’s overwhelmingly likely Hamas will eventually be able to resupply itself with weapons, missiles and explosives.
The Israelis have been insistent that the IDF retain freedom of movement across Gaza so if any terrorist threat reconstitutes itself the Israelis can take swift action.
Fatah, the Palestinian faction that through the Palestinian Authority runs the West Bank, recently denounced Hamas for the absolutely needless suffering it brought on Gaza Palestinians by attacking Israel. In Fatah’s view, this was purely in the service of Iran’s strategic interests. Fatah was determined not to let Hamas establish itself on the West Bank and bring similar carnage to West Bank Palestinians.
But here are the contradictions that the peace ceasefire doesn’t address. Who governs Gaza once the Israelis have withdrawn?
Anthony Albanese says Hamas can have no role in the future governance of Gaza. A wise remark. But at every point the Prime Minister has opposed any actual action by Israel to prevent Hamas from exercising power. Talk about the comfort of irresponsibility.
Even today, Hamas is still in a position to steal aid, especially food, intimidate the Palestinian population and recruit new fighters to partly replace the old. The Gazan public is desperately keen for a ceasefire, desperately keen for some shred of normality to return to life. But for this to happen Hamas has to commit to not attacking Israelis again, or Israel has to stay in some kind of occupation.
There’s airy talk about getting peacekeeping troops in from neighbouring Arab countries. This seems extremely unrealistic.
There are no circumstances in which such troops would shoot on Hamas members or other Palestinian terrorists to prevent them attacking Israelis. And if such attacks are carried out the Israeli military will respond with great vigour. The Arab troops then would simply have to get out of the way or leave altogether. It’s hard to imagine any neighbouring Arab nation signing up for that.
But Trump had great success in the Middle East last time and might have similar success this time, notwithstanding the tragedy and mess of Gaza. Trump is a bully and a narcissist (like a lot of leaders). But as others point out, he’s also a deal-maker, a ruthless seeker of outcomes, and he likes the adulation of international statesmen and of history. And he tends to follow the money, in diplomacy as well as business. These instincts can lead him astray but they often work very well.
Trump created a clear, coherent structure in the Middle East last time he was president. He fully backed Israel and therefore had great influence with Israel, and he fully backed the Gulf Arab states that were against Iran, especially Saudi Arabia, creating a de facto US-Israel-Arab alliance against Iran. Trump nearly achieved a Saudi-Israel peace treaty. He will certainly seek that again this time.
Netanyahu told me once his strategy for the Palestinian issue was to solve it “outside in”. That is, if Israel can normalise its relations with most of its neighbours, over time this can lead to a normalised situation with Palestinians.
The rest of the world hopes such normalisation could lead eventually to a two-state solution, which Netanyahu has supported in the past.
Labor’s claim, frequently echoed in bizarre editorials on the ABC, that it is only backing traditional two state-policy and Peter Dutton has abandoned the two-state solution is completely dishonest and untrue.
Dutton’s position is exactly the same, as was John Howard’s and in fact all pre-Albanese prime ministers.
He supports a two-state solution that is negotiated fully by Israel and the Palestinians and includes the absolute disavowal of terrorism and the end of all claims on Israel by Palestinians. Albanese and his Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, in contrast, support forcing a two-state solution on Israel even if Palestinian leaders don’t commit to the things necessary for peace. That could be disastrous.
Trump won’t be obsessed by the two-state solution or anything else. The biggest question for Trump in the Middle East is whether he will back Israel in attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities or whether these could be addressed by truly hard-headed negotiations. Trump very much likes the idea that wars don’t happen when he’s president. Iran could be a special case.
In any event, the Trump presidency will transform the Middle East, as it will transform the world.
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