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Analysis

Fathom | Claire Spencer on Trump and the peace process

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Claire Spencer is Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme and Second Century Initiative, Chatham House. In this reflection on the likely impact of the US election on the Middle East Peace Process, first published in Fathom, she suggests the old ways of negotiating, pretending to negotiate, and stalling over vested interests have well and truly had their day. If Trump engages (and his intentions remain unclear), this businessman will likely rewrite the rules of the “peace process”. Everyone will need to adapt very quickly.

President-elect Trump has been surprisingly upbeat about what he calls “the ultimate deal”. But this does not mean that reviving a peace process will be a priority for him. Last year, candidate Trump said, “A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal — whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things.” He added: “That may not be OK, and I understand that, and I’m OK with that, but then you’re just not going to have a deal.” Since his election, he told Israel Hayom that “I believe that my administration can play a significant role in helping the parties to achieve a just, lasting peace”, without spelling out what that role might be. Early post-election statements from his campaign team advisers Walid Phares and Jason Dov Greenblatt have already set some of the parameters: Israeli settlements are not an obstacle; the US Embassy will move to Jerusalem, but “under consensus”; the incoming president “will make it a priority if the Israelis and Palestinians want to make it a priority”, but will not “force peace upon them, it will have to come from them.”  In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on 10 November, Trump himself said: “(a)s a deal maker, I’d like to do … the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”

On the Israeli side, Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s early declaration that “the era of a Palestinian state is over” may well seem premature if the inference is that President Trump will be an easy touch for Israel. Since then, Trump has named Stephen Bannon (“a man accused of fanning the flames of neo-Nazism and white supremacy” in the words of the Guardian) as his chief strategist in the White House, to widespread US establishment alarm. Trump’s indifference to settlements — and a Ministerial Committee in Israel advanced legislation to legalise settlements on private Palestinian land only last week, in defiance of both the Prime Minister and Attorney General — has also not yet translated into complete indifference to an eventual Palestinian state, if only because he has yet to catch up with the details. When he does he will see all of it through the prism of what benefits the US. The $38bn ten-year military support package concluded by the Obama administration in September this year, for example, may seem a necessary expenditure to shore up a long-standing ally in the heart of a “Daesh”-riddled Middle East. Equally, in terms of his broader agendas and domestic support base (over 70 per cent of American Jews having reportedly voted for Hillary Clinton), it may not. The Republican Party, which criticised the deal at the time, may seek to loosen up its terms, which effectively make Israel’s security relationship with the US dependent on purchasing US military hardware. A Trump presidency may see these terms as good for US military exports and jobs, and thus good for US interests; he may equally think that Israel – like the US’s military clients in the Gulf – should pay more of the bill itself.

Read the full article in Fathom.