Trump will increase our misery: Palestinian, Lebanese victims of Israeli wars | Israel-Palestine Conflicts News

Deir el-Balah, Gaza, Palestine, Beirut, Lebanon – The citizens of Palestine and Lebanon are looking at more destruction when Donald Trump begins his second term as president of the United States in January.

While millions of Trump supporters celebrated his victory, many in the Middle East looked on with dread.

In Gaza, the West Bank and neighboring Lebanon, there are fears that Israel’s staunch allies will embolden their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the right-wing coalition government to fuel regional conflicts and destroy any Palestinian autonomy.

“I don’t trust America,” said Abu Ali, an 87-year-old Gazan who was displaced from his home like many people there. “I expect that the war in Gaza will be very bad [under Trump].”

The administration of the outgoing US President Joe Biden has supported Israel in its campaign in Gaza.

Since the attack led by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1,139 people were killed and 250 kidnapped, the Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza – using US weapons – has killed more than 43,000 and uprooted almost the entire population. 2.3 million people.

The Palestinians there fear that Trump is now going to light the plans to expel them from the line.

The Republican president-elect accused Biden, a Democrat, of blocking Israel from Gaza and made a vague promise to help Israel “finish the job” if re-elected.

“I don’t know if the situation will improve under Trump. He just might [allow Israel] to drive us all away [from Gaza] instead of killing us,” said Abu Mohamad sarcastically in a refugee camp in Gaza.

Abu Ali believes that the Palestinians are at the mercy of whoever is in power in the US.

As a survivor of the Nakba (“catastrophe”), the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist forces during the creation of Israel in 1948, he said he has seen many US presidents support Israeli atrocities against his people.

He expects that trend to continue under Trump and stressed that the Nakba or Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza should not be called “war”.

“There are no wars [between Israel and Palestine],” he told Al Jazeera. “It was not a war then. And this is not a war [in Gaza]. It is genocide.”

The view from Lebanon

In Lebanon, many people expect Trump to maintain or increase support for the Israeli war.

Israel says it is fighting the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, however observers accuse Israel of fighting the country’s Shia community.

In Lebanon, political positions are distributed equally based on the religious makeup of the country. The president is always a Maronite Christian, the prime minister is a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of the parliament is a Shia Muslim.

Since Lebanon’s civil war, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, Hezbollah has consolidated power over the Shia community by blending religion, identity and resistance into a populist political movement. Hezbollah also cracked down on the opposition.

In the past month, Israel has escalated its war against Hezbollah by bombing cities and towns in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Residents from every town and village have been displaced by Israeli fire, which has burned their homes and fueled fears of permanent displacement.

Ali Saleem, who was forcibly displaced from the southern city of Sour, said the war would continue under Trump. He said the president-elect may present a ceasefire proposal that favors Israel but not Hezbollah or Lebanon.

“Trump will put an offer on the table, and then say, ‘Do you want to end the war or not?'” Selim, 30, told Al Jazeera. “If we say no, the war will continue.”

Ali Aloweeya, 44, added that Trump is likely to protect “Zionist interests” in the region.

He fears that Trump may allow Israel to try to build illegal settlements in southern Lebanon, as some Israeli activists and politicians have called for.

“If Trump comes back and serves Israeli interests, we will oppose it. We are a people of opposition.”

Fear of inclusion

During Trump’s first term as president from 2017 to 2021, he took measures that hurt the Palestinian people in the cleared area and the surrounding region.

He cut US funding to the UN Palestinian aid agency (UNRWA) and broke with decades of policy by moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Palestinians saw these measures as an attempt to violate their right to return to their land – as stated in UN Resolution 194 – and to force them to surrender East Jerusalem as the capital of the future state of Palestine.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and annexed Arab lands after defeating Arab forces in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Tasame Ramadan, a Palestinian human rights activist, now fears that Trump may allow Israel to take over much of the West Bank. Activists, analysts and rights groups say Israel has already done that.

“As Palestinians, we don’t expect anything good from Trump. “His decisions are unpredictable, but he often ignores Palestinian voices, and his decisions have a lasting impact on the Palestinian people,” said Ramadan, who lives in Nablus, a city in the West Bank.

He mentioned that Trump in 2019 recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights taken from Syria, violating international law.

He is preparing the same policies that could harm – even kill – Palestinian aspirations for self-determination.

“Trump’s actions ignore our rights and our hopes for freedom and an independent Palestinian state,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But I don’t think the Palestinians would be happy if [US Vice President Kamala] Harris had also won the election. He should have been defeated because of his stance on the Palestinian situation and not stopping the massacre.

“In both cases, there is neither of these two [candidates] were our best options. “