Some Israelis Hail Trump’s Win, Others Express Fears

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Those in Netanyahu’s sphere see the returning U.S. president much more in line with Israel’s needs. Some on the left warn Trump may pursue his own course.

In a society whose political rifts often mirror those in the United States, Israeli reactions to Donald Trump’s electoral victory ranged from jubilance on the right to distaste and fear on the left and among the Palestinian population.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the first world leaders to congratulate Trump, posted on social media, “Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America . . . This is a huge victory!”

Benny Gantz, an opposition leader who shared the prime minister position with Netanyahu from 2020 to 2021, also congratulated Trump. On social media, Gantz hailed Trump as “a true friend of Israel who has already proven this in his actions.”

Gantz noted Trump’s signing of the Abraham Accords, making peace between Israel and four Arab nations, his recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, and his moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank, struck a conciliatory tone. He congratulated Trump on his election and said he would cooperate with the new administration to reach regional peace.

“We will remain steadfast in our commitment to peace, and we are confident that the United States will support, under your leadership, the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” Abbas said in a statement.

Amos Harel, a columnist for the left-leaning Ha’aretz newspaper, was less optimistic. He called Trump “capricious, self-driven and unpredictable.” He forecast that Trump’s second term would be “a more extreme version of his first term as president.”

Harel thought it too soon to predict Trump’s foreign policy. And he found his first term’s more of a mixed bag. “Trump will put his own interests first, and they won’t necessarily always be aligned with the expectations of Netanyahu’s coalition.”

While Trump, Harel said, “signaled a message of isolationism, sharp reservations about American investment in defending allies and an unwillingness to get involved in more unnecessary foreign wars,” Trump, on the other hand, “bought Netanyahu’s arguments and withdrew from the nuclear agreement with Iran in a way that brought the regime in Tehran to its closest point toward creating a bomb ever.”

Harel worried that Iran, afraid of Trump, might move up a subsequent round of missile attacks.

Trump ‘Going to Stop Wars’

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Elizabeth Pipko, a Jewish activist and the daughter of Russian immigrants, told Israeli television Trump would want Israel to wrap up its wars soon—with decisive victories.

The interviewer, Channel 12 anchor Yonit Levi, asked her about Trump’s remark near the end of his victory speech, that “I’m not going to start wars, I’m going to stop wars,” and whether that meant he wanted to Israel to end its wars against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

“I would say he expects them to end it by winning it, 100 percent. That’s how he always talks about ending wars,” said Pipko, whose 2018 wedding was at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Club.

“I also believe the response on Oct. 8, had it happened (on his watch,) would have been very, very different.”

She said Trump wants it to end with “decisive victory.”

U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Sept. 15, 2020. Netanyahu was in Washington to participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords. (Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu meet in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Sept. 15, 2020. Netanyahu was in Washington to participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords. Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images

When Levi followed up by noting that ‘decisive victory’ has so far taken more than a year, Pipko faulted the Biden administration’s “back and forth policy” on it, its failure to free the Americans among Hamas’s hostages, and its seeming eye on the 2024 election in the war’s conduct, for the war’s length and “unnecessary bloodshed.”

One of Netanyahu’s allies, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, said he was confident Trump would see “eye to eye” with Israel on “all sorts of laws” he has tried to push through, including the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of terrorism.

Settlement Politics

Israel Ganz, head of the Yesha Council representing Jewish residents of the West Bank, which many Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria, called the moment a historic “opportunity for the settlement movement.”

Parties representing Jewish residents in the West Bank are key members of Netanyahu’s coalition, and the current administration has sped up Israeli development there.

Netanyahu, perhaps signaling what his coalition expects of him, changed Israel’s U.S. ambassador.

A man walks in front of a billboard displaying a message in support of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump in Israel's coastal city of Tel Aviv on Nov. 5, 2024. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images) — A man walks in front of a billboard displaying a message in support of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump in Israel’s coastal city of Tel Aviv on Nov. 5, 2024. Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

The new appointee, Yechiel Leiter, lives in Gush Etzion, one of Israel’s West Bank settlement blocs. He was born in the United States, and his son, IDF Maj. Moshe Yedidya Leiter was killed in battle in Gaza on Nov. 10, 2023, according to Israel’s Government Press Office.

Ganz called Leiter a “key partner in English-language advocacy for Judea and Samaria.”

Settlement politics figured into reactions from the Palestinian perspective as well. Columnist Jack Khoury, writing in Ha’aretz, said Palestinian prospects are worse now than in Trump’s first term: “No pressure for a withdrawal from Gaza, no negotiations for a diplomatic solution, and no talk of a plan that will halt the settlement project.”

Khoury alluded not only to Jewish settlers on the West Bank but to calls for some from that quarter to resume Jewish settlement in Gaza.

Then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally withdrew Israel from Gaza in 2005. Almost 9,000 Jewish settlers from the Gush Katif settlement bloc in south Gaza, between Rafah and Khan Yunis, had to leave their homes, some removed kicking and screaming by Israeli troops. The memory and resentment linger in some circles in Israel.

A group of settlers recently formed an encampment on Israeli soil near the Gaza frontier. One, a pregnant woman, told a Times reporter that it was a temporary stop. They intend to settle in Gaza, she said. “We have to settle inside Gaza. We have to take our enemy’s land. Well, it’s our land, actually.”

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.