Tel Aviv — After more than a year of bombing and homelessness, Gaza residents are turning to a new administration in Washington for help. President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory has raised hopes and fears among the five million residents of the Palestinian territories. Gaza Strip torn apart by warning and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Rakan Abdul Ahman, a Gaza resident, told CBS News he wants the new US president to force Israel to end the war.
“We have seen enough killings of women and children,” he said. “I am waiting for Trump to end the suffering in the Gaza Strip.”
Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty
In the eyes of Ahmed Harb, a Gazan journalist, the new Trump administration faces a real test. In his victory speech, Trump said he would end wars. Harb hopes that means Gaza.
“I hope he was telling the truth,” he told CBS News, adding, “But he shouldn’t stop the war at the expense of the Palestinian people.”
This is also the great concern of Palestinian politicians, notably Mustafa Bargouti. Still a practicing doctor, he leads the Palestinian National Initiative, a party that advocates democratic government for all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
The question, Bargouti said, is: “How do we stop the war?” Stop it by annexing the occupied territories?
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, triggered by the massacre of some 1,200 people by the United States and an Israeli-designated terrorist group on October 7, 2023, has diverted international attention from the growth violence in the West Bank by Israeli settlers determined to encroach on what was once Palestinian land.
In 2023, there were a record number of so-called outposts – makeshift Jewish encampments set up by settlers on what was once Palestinian land. They can be as simple as a few shipping containers that function as a de facto Jewish real estate claim. Settler groups then pressure the Israeli courts and government to retroactively make official Jewish settlements in these outposts.
Right-wing members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet support Jewish expansion, including outposts, in the West Bank. They openly advocate expelling the Palestinians and annexing the entire area for the benefit of Israel. Not only would this be illegal under international law, Bargouti warns that it would also lead to more conflict.
“We will fight for our rights,” he said. “It will take time. We will suffer. We know that. But what is the alternative? To cease to exist? This is ethnic cleansing. We cannot accept this.”
Palestinians around the world are watching with dismay as Trump’s choice of pro-Israel officials in key positions, particularly Mike Huckabee, the president-elect’s choice to become the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, is on record as saying: “Palestinians really don’t exist. »
“When you hear a person like Huckabee say that there is no occupation and there are no settlements, it’s just Israeli communities… you might as well say that there is no of international law,” Bargouti said.
During Trump’s first term, he opposed the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and, in 2020, proposed what he called “the deal of the century” – a model for a Palestinian state both research.
Under his proposal, the new state would have been a scattering of isolated Palestinian lands, each surrounded by Israel. The plan was rejected by both Palestinians and Jewish settlers, and since then both sides have been entrenched.
Even if the new Trump administration revives some version of its Palestinian state proposal, it will find itself confronting Palestinians and their Arab allies whose resolve has only been strengthened by a year of devastating war in Gaza that killed nearly 44,000 people.
On the Israeli side, hardliners in Netanyahu’s government oppose any form of Palestinian sovereignty. Netanyahu himself categorically rejected the prospect repeatedly.
Bargouti, however, looked ready for the fight.
“I’m sure it’s going to be a tough year for everyone,” he told CBS News. “But whatever happens, we, the Palestinian people, will never give up our right to fight for our freedom.”
Elizabeth Palmer
