Will the Palestinians be wiped out? Will they be forced out of Gaza to other countries? Will the West bank be fully subsumed? How will a Trump Presidency affect the current conflict?
Hard to say. He will stand back and let Netanyahu do whatever he wants. I’m not familiar enough with the latter’s policies to know what that might be.
Well and truly fucked would be my guess.
No.
Not unless Netanyahu is removed from office by Ben Gvir.
Israel may not make as many ceasefire offers, but that hardly matters because Hamas keeps rejecting them anyways.
A much bigger impact on the conflict might be in how Israel confronts Iran should the latter continue to try and escalate. A Trump presidency might embolden Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.
This isn’t a conversation that can meaningfully be held outside of the Pit, since “what will happen is Gaza” has a mandated answer in this subforum.
During his first Presidency, Trump’s middle East policy was pretty tightly ruled by Mike Pompeo and Jared Kushner. They were both deeply favorable towards Israel and, so far as I could ever tell, the only competent organization in the administration. They probably would have arranged the Abraham Accords a couple of years earlier - and as something more impressive - had it not been for Trump announcing that he’d had a brain spasm to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, destroying the effort.
But I don’t know that Trump, himself, really cares about the matter as deeply as those two did. Kushner, last I saw, wasn’t intending to come back. I’m not hopeful that Trump will go for Pompeo.
Or default assumption at the moment is that Trump is going to hire a Secretary of State who’s a bootlicker and we’ll get Trump’s foreign policy. Which basically means that our foreign policy is out to the highest bidder.
That being so, the highest bidder would probably be Saudi Arabia. They have a pretty big history of trying to buy out Trump (probably successfully).
My sense is that they mostly want a stable Middle East with themselves as the dominant power in the region. The King seems to be relatively ambivalent about Israel or privately positive, but unable to show that in public due to the general hate of Israel among the rest of the Islamic territories. He’s probably fairly strongly against Iran but I’m not sure that he’s interested in starting a war with them (but he might privately cheer for Israel to go beat them up).
I’d expect that, if the politics of the Islamic region required it, he’d jettison Israel in a heart beat and, consequently, Netanyahu is going to cozy up to him and convince him to let Israel be the “bad guy” who helps to get Saudi Arabia everything it wants.
In general, I expect the Middle East to actually turn out fairly well under a Trump presidency, even if it’s all for the wrong reasons. But, by that, I mean that I expect Israel and Saudi Arabia to become dominant and start making the region more stable, minus Iran. The Gazans are, likely, going to be the sacrificial lamb to make that happen.
The one place where that could all go wrong would be if Trump senses that he’s got the upper hand or that the whole situation just isn’t involving him and his input enough, in which case he could start turning on Saudi Arabia and Israel, basically, just to be an evil bastard and to try and get them to scramble to suck up harder.
Netanyahu would probably do so but Salman, likely, would not. And, in that case, minus the influence of the US, Salman might decide to screw over Israel just to punish the US for its leader.
I’d probably go 70/30 on the likelihood of two options.
The only case that turns out different from one of the above is if Kushner decides to come back.
At this point, probably not much. My understanding is the IDF has killed most Hamas militants, and what are left are stragglers. Hamas as an organized force is gone.
I’m guessing what’ll happen is an international coalition will occupy Gaza and Lebanon and act as peacekeepers. But that would’ve happened no matter who was president in the US.
However now with Trump as president, I think Israel will start building settlements in Gaza.
Not unless Netanyahu is ousted - he has been firmly against settlements in Gaza (to the annoyance of some of his allies).
He doesn’t seem to be against it on any moral or legalistic basis.
A Trump presidency is liable to be one of the signal indicators for that decision that just went green.
So what? He’s against it because he recognizes that there’s no way for Israel to settle and annex that land securely, given the two million Palestinians who live there and strongly dislike Israelis. That situation isn’t going to change, regardless of who is in the White House.
How much pressure is on Bibi to get how ever any of the hostages are left alive home?
My impression is that the realistic goals have been met. Hamas is as destroyed as it can be. Hezbellah is rudderless and diminished in any ability to attack. Iran is seemingly cutting their losses and not likely to reinvest huge amounts rearming them. They don’t have their proxies to fight for them and don’t want to do it themselves.
My WAG was that Bibi would be more aggressive on a ceasefire once the American election was over. He just did not want to anything that might help Harris win. And I suspect the Hamas side would be happy to return the remaining hostages and bodies for some semblance of face saving if they felt Bibi really was interested.
…I take no pleasure in writing this post.
First off: it’s pretty important to understand, before we look at what could happen under Trump, what is going on, right now, under the Biden administration.
Here is an open letter from the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, 15 UN and Humanitarian agencies that include (among others) OCHA, Oxfam, UNICEF and WHO.
The very last fire engine in the north was destroyed a couple of weeks ago. Civil defence has ceased to operate. That means when a building is bombed, and there are people under the rubble, there is nobody around to rescue them. The three remaining hospitals are barely functioning. Hospital staff have been detained and disappeared, killed, hospital infrastructure damaged.
And they are clearing out the refugee camps. One by one. Reporting is very limited. Because Israel has killed most of the reporters. But the pattern is clear. Daily massacres, forced marches to the south.
The goal is to empty the north. Don’t believe me?
Here is what Elad Goren, a senior COGAT official, said last week on the record.
The reason why they aren’t letting aid through to the north any more is because they are (falsely) claiming the population has mostly left. They are already acting as if the north is depopulated.
More from the IASC:
Bolding mine.
I think its very important to understand as we transition from the Biden administration to the Trump one that humanitarian agencies on the ground are basically begging for the carnage to stop, because the entire population in North Gaza is at imminent risk of dying.
So will much materially change with Trump in charge?
I don’t think so. This will continue. I think North Gaza will be cut off from the rest of Gaza and annexed. I think we will see permanent outposts built in Rafah and throughout the rest of the south (we are already seeing some being built) and what remains of Gaza will become effectively a concentration camp. And the thing is, I think that would have probably happened under Harris as well.
Further from the report:
There is much, much more at the link, along with the latest Flash Update with more details on what is currently happening on the ground:
But it’s the last bit I quoted, about the decision by Israel to ban UNRWA, ignoring the UN Charter, constant and ongoing breaches by Israel of the Geneva Conventions and International Humanitarian Law, that I think will ultimately be the biggest difference between what a Democrat lead administration would do and what the Trump administration will do.
The Democrats would at the very least pay lip service to international law. Trump?
He’s going to smash it.
Institutions will get broken. I think the United Nations is at risk. International Humanitarian Law will get de-legitimized. Rulings from the ICC and the ICJ will be ignored. New alliances will get formed. The next decade is going to get very dark, very quick. Israel have been working for a very long time to break UNRWA, to destroy the very concept of a “Palestinian refugee”, and with Trump in power, I fear they will finally get their wish.
I think you’re vastly overestimating the influence that the US president has on Israeli policies. If Biden/Harris could have more or less dictated an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza on an “or else” basis, it would probably have happened.
…and just like clockwork, we are seeing the first signs of the difference between the Biden Administration and what will happen under Trump:
Under Biden, these forced transfers were always supposed to be “temporary”. But now that Trump has won that pretence has gone now. Humanitarian agencies report there are still hundreds of thousands of civilians still trapped in North Gaza. Yet Israel says they are all gone, which means they don’t have to provide aid there any more, and anyone killed in the bombing or shot by sniper were “Hamas.”
This is, without a doubt, ethnic cleansing and with Trump to assume the presidency next year, they don’t even see the need to hide that fact any more.
It astounds me that you continue to do this after your claims of starvation from like a year ago failed to materialize.
When this prediction turns out to be wrong too, will you admit that, or just move the goalposts again?
It would only be ethnic cleansing if Israel plans to annex the territory, which doesn’t seem likely at this point.
…can I suggest you take up this tangent with OCHA, Oxfam, UNICEF, WHO and the other members of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee?
If you want to dispute their claims I’m happy to take it up in another thread.
…it seems very likely at this point. In fact in my post that was exactly what I argued they will do, and I think that under Trump they will do it.
They are on the record that Palestinians will not be allowed to return to their homes. And the IDF are in the process of destroying said homes through a combination of bombing, controlled demolition, bulldozer, and setting them on fire. What do you think will be happening next?
…it really, really does not.
When it doesn’t happen, will you concede that you were wrong, or move the goal posts again?
You know I gotta’ ask: how many people, including young children, have to die before you admit that this desruction is a bad thing? I’ve seen some quotes from West Bank, “settlers.” Who quite proudly proclaimed all Palestinians, must be removed (at least from the West Bank) or killed.
This is all immoral and wrong. The way ethnic cleansing and genocide keep happening, is that people who should know better, defend it/deny it’s happening.
Of course the destruction is a bad thing. That’s why Hamas’ should release the hostages and surrender.
Ethnic Cleansing doesn’t mean more people died than I am comfortable with. It is the removal of an entire ethnic group from a place to make way for someone else. And the Gazans aren’t going anywhere, even if Banquet Bear freaks out every time they move within Gaza.