With mediated negotiations between Israel and Hamas at their most intensive since the current conflict in the Gaza Strip began, US president-elect Donald Trump issued a general warning yesterday with no specified address: "If they don't get it done, there's going to be a lot of trouble out there, like they have never seen before."
That statement comes on top of other pressures that Trump has brought to bear to try to ensure that a deal for the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip takes place before he enters the White House on January 20. Among these was the sudden visit of Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff to Jerusalem on Saturday, after he had been present at the negotiations in Qatar.
"It’s a message that could apply to everybody, and it’s starting to have an impact," says Dr. Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher and head of the Gulf Program at the Institute for National Security Studies. "We’re seeing the Trump effect. Just as he’s about to take office, Israel, Hamas, and even the mediator, are showing a degree of flexibility. There’s a certain feature connected not just to what Trump said, but to expectations of a new president to whom everyone wants to present an inauguration gift."
Dr. Eldad Ben-Aharon, a senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, explains that the messages are deliberately vague. "There’s an area of international relations called ‘deterrence’, in which experts try to understand the limits of deterrence and its goal. Trump’s maintenance of vagueness, with no mention of what the consequences will be, only sharpens the threat. He also did not tie ‘a lot of trouble’ to any particular player. He’s threatening Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinians in general, and it’s noticeably succeeding."
Even before entering the White House, Trump has succeeded in forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to proceed towards a deal, despite the political price Netanyahu is likely to have to deal with as a consequence. The president elect aspires to receive the Nobel prize for peace, and realizes that normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia is a good means of achieving that goal. On the way to that, however, lies an especially difficult challenge: solving the Iranian nuclear threat.
"Don’t brandish a weapon you won’t use"
Trump recognizes that continuation of the fighting in the Gaza Strip has serious economic consequences. Economist Daniel Egel of research organization RAND told news agency Bloomberg last August that rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip was liable to cost some $80 billion.
For the sake of comparison, in 2021, the World Bank estimated that the cost of rehabilitating the Gaza Strip after the damage caused in Operation Guardian of the Walls would amount to $485 million. Before that, in 2014, the Palestinian Ministry of the National Economy estimated the damage from that year’s Operation Protective Edge at $3 billion. That is, the damage in the 360 square kilometers of the Gaza Strip will be 25 times or more greater than in Operation Protective Edge.
Yaki Dayan, a former Israeli consul general in Los Angeles, sees Trump’s behavior, including his latest statement, as aimed at resolving the Gaza Strip front quickly. "He wants Lebanon and the hostages issue off the agenda, and the method he’s employing to that end is the opposite of Biden’s. He applies a great deal of force and threat. I presume that it’s clear to him that if some of the things don’t materialize, he’ll have to use force, otherwise it will erode the deterrence."
Among the tools that the president elect could use in the region, Dayan mentions pressure on Qatar to act against senior Hamas figures on its territory, and measures to do with humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and military aid to Israel. "Trump is exerting full force, including coercing Israel, to reach a deal before he enters the White House. It’s reminiscent of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, when on Reagan’s first day in office the 52 American hostages held in Teheran were freed after 444 days in captivity."
Dr. Ben-Aharon is sure that the president elect has thought in advance of the sanctions he will invoke to hurt if there’s no deal, because "as they say, don’t brandish a weapon if you won’t use it."
"Both sides have something to lose without a deal," he says. "On the Israeli side, for example, if there’s no deal, Trump could oppose steps the right-wing government aspires to take, such as toppling the Palestinian Authority or annexation on the West Bank. The context is important: in a year and four months, Biden did not succeed in bringing about a ceasefire, and it looks as though Trump is succeeding even before he enters the White House. Trump doesn’t care about the content of the deal itself, but only that there should be one. He’s thinking about his legacy, and he aspires to a Nobel prize."
Is an attack on Iran on the agenda?
Trump’s path to a Nobel prize almost certainly lies through normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. The immediate concern of both these parties, however, is the Iranian nuclear program. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency report of December 26, uranium enrichment to 60% at the Fordow site in Iran will jump from 4.7 kilograms to 34 kilograms. This is an enrichment level not far below the 85-90% level required for a nuclear weapon.
According to Dayan, the big question when it comes to neutralizing Iran’s nuclear threat is whether Trump will decide to attack himself, or whether he will strengthen Israel’s capabilities to do so. In his view, Trump himself doesn’t have an answer yet. "He doesn’t want to go there, because he hopes that a scenario without war will work. Greenland is an example. There’s logic to what he says about Greenland, in the context of global warming, and economic and security aspects. Will he invade Greenland? I assume not. Will he try to reach an agreement to buy Greenland? I estimate that he’ll do his best."
In a direct continuation to the Abraham Accords, for which Trump reaped candidacy for the Nobel peace prize but didn’t win it, it can be assumed that the new administration in Washington will seek to broker a historic normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Dr. Guzansky says that although the Saudis have no necessary connection to the hostages issue, if a ceasefire takes hold "then the Saudis will be required to come up with a present. I see them being more pragmatic vis-à-vis Trump. Their relations with Trump in general are important to them. Both Israel and Saudi Arabia will have to make difficult decisions and demonstrate flexibility. The Saudis have climbed a high tree, and Israel will have to give them a ladder in the shape of Palestinian sovereignty. Israel will have to give the Saudis more than it thought it would before October 7."
"The normalization track with Saudi Arabia is among Trump’s considerations, because he wants the Nobel prize for peace," Dayan says. "As far as Iran is concerned, I assume that maximum pressure will continue with the aim of forcing them into an agreement that isn’t JCPOA. When he says ‘all options are on the table,’ he means it."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 15, 2025.
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