Tel Aviv – After more than a year of bombings and homelessness, Gazans are looking to a new government in Washington for help. The election victory of newly elected President Donald Trump has raised hopes and fears among the five million residents of the Palestinian territories. Gaza Strip torn by warning and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Rakan Abdul Ahman, a resident of Gaza, told CBS News that he wants the new US president to force Israel to end the war.
“We have witnessed enough massacres of women and children,” he said. “I look for Trump to end the suffering in the Gaza Strip.”
Abed Rahim Khatib/Anadolu/Getty
In the eyes of Ahmed Harb, a journalist from Gaza, the new Trump administration faces a real test. In his victory speech, Trump said he would end wars. Harb hopes this means the one in Gaza.
“I hope he told the truth,” he told CBS News, adding: “But he should not stop the war at the expense of the Palestinian people.”
That is also the major concern of Palestinian politicians, including Mustafa Bargouti. He is still a practicing doctor and heads the Palestinian National Initiative, a party that advocates for a democratic government for all Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.
The question, Bargouti said, is ‘how do you stop the war? Will you stop him by annexing occupied territories? By ethnically cleansing Palestinians? Or will you stop the war by forcing Israel to end its illegal policy of settling Israelis in our country?”
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, sparked by the massacre of approximately 1,200 people by the American and Israeli-designated terrorist group on October 7, 2023, has diverted international attention from the growing violence in the West Bank by Israeli settlers determined to encroach on what has been Palestinian land.
By 2023, there were a record number of so-called outposts: makeshift Jewish encampments set up by settlers in what was once Palestinian land. They can be as simple as a few shipping containers acting as a de facto Jewish real estate claim. The settler groups then lobby the Israeli courts and government to retroactively make the outposts official Jewish settlements.
Rightists in 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 Israel. Not only would that 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? It is ethnic cleansing. We cannot accept that.”
Palestinians around the world are watching with dismay at Trump’s choice of pro-Israel officials for key positions, especially Mike Huckabee, the president-elect’s pick to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.
Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, has said, “There really is no such thing as a Palestinian.”
“When you hear someone like Huckabee say there is no occupation and there are no settlements, they are just Israeli communities… he might as well say there is no 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 template for a long-sought Palestinian state.
Under his proposal, the new state would have been a scattering of isolated Palestinian areas, each surrounded by Israel. The plan was rejected by both Palestinians and Jewish settlers, and both sides have since dug in.
Even if the new Trump administration revives some version of its proposal for a Palestinian state, it will have to deal with Palestinians and their Arab allies whose resolve has only been hardened by a devastating year of war in Gaza, in which almost 44,000 people died.
On the Israeli side, hardliners in Netanyahu’s government oppose any form of Palestinian sovereignty. Netanyahu himself has done that too flatly rejected the prospect repeatedly.
Bargouti, however, sounded ready for battle.
“I’m sure it will be a difficult 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
