No new wars under Trump. I hear this hollow bromide often. Set aside the irony that the neoconservatives offering this “fact” will cheer war at every other opportunity, and take it at face value. It’s true — U.S. troops weren’t deployed to new fronts between 2017 and 2021 (if you ignore sending more troops to Iraq or launching airstrikes in Syria [1]). It’s misleading at the least. Trump’s impulsive, narcissistic, kleptocratic Middle East policy decisions sowed seeds for Israel’s war on Palestine and now Lebanon, a conflict sure to be exacerbated by his reelection.

Today the U.S. is the only nation that recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — the 444 square miles of hilly, Syrian land was occupied by Israel in the expansionist 1967 war — thanks to Trump[2]. Though it may seem like a largely semantic policy change, Trump’s 2019 declaration that the long-contested Golan belongs to the state of Israel was consequential, because it removed a potential bargaining chip from an eventual peace agreement with the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors.

Visions for peace in the Middle East, such as in the Arab Peace Initiative, a framework for solutions today supported by 22 Arab states, have always included the Golan Heights. The Initiative reads: “(a) Complete withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories, including the Syrian Golan Heights, to the 4 June 1967 line and the territories still occupied in southern Lebanon.”

Trump’s waving away of this issue was in fact a middle finger to Palestinians who watched as settlements continued to proliferate across the West Bank, and to Syrians whose Druze population to this day live in a kind of limbo between nations. Trump asked his adviser David Freidman for a “five minutes or less” download on the Golan before deciding he would declare it Israeli territory (what Trump calls “a quickie”). Trump’s recognition of Israeli ownership of the Golan contravenes fundamental international law, forbidding the acquisition of territory by force. Morality and law aside, it’s outrageous that for the master “deal maker” Trump is supposed to be, the U.S. received no concessions or benefit from this declaration, save for giving a gift to the Adelsons, American mega-donors who’ve donated hundreds of millions to Trump super PACs[3].

But that wasn’t the only bad deal Trump gifted Israel during his term in office. In the spring of 2017, he unilaterally declared Jerusalem Israel’s capital and moved the American embassy there. Though it was a Democrat who passed a measure in the 1990s affirming the move of the embassy to the contested holy city, no president until Trump actually instituted the change. That’s because, again, it’s an issue central to the creation of a Palestinian state, as Palestinians have long sought to make East Jerusalem their capital.

Israel annexed Jerusalem and claimed it as their capital in 1980, but the United Nations censured them, imposing an order that no nation should place an embassy in Jerusalem, a city that today stands as the starkest reminder of Israeli apartheid, as a 30-foot high concrete “West Bank barrier” snakes between parts of the city, making major holy sites in Jerusalem accessible only through military checkpoints and constant surveillance. Trump’s rash decision again shocked and angered not only the international community — every NATO ally voted unanimously to condemn the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem — but also the Palestinians who have struggled for over 75 years to build, farm, pray, resist and exist under Israeli military control.

In response to the move, the Palestinian Authority declared the U.S. could no longer function as a mediator, and the Arab League (which in 2017 reaffirmed the Arab Peace Initiative, this time with concessions from Hamas[4] that made their agreement seem likely) condemned the move[5]. During the protests that came from the decision to move the embassy, the IDF injured 2,400 Palestinians, killing 60, including stone-throwers, teenagers and the disabled (Plitnick). Again, this move lacked any benefit to American interest, save for the only American Trump cares about: himself.

“Despite fiery rhetoric about Jerusalem being the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, it was understood across party lines and ideological borders that recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital outside of a permanent peace agreement was extremely unwise … (Trump) made the decision with no strategic goal in mind,” wrote Mitchell Plitnick in 2017.

With this move, “the Palestinians are being told that all the norms on which they have based their commitment to negotiations are nothing but smoke … that the international community is either unable or unwilling to do anything to assist them when the chips are down … that their only hope is to create such pain for the Israelis and unrest throughout the region that their needs will have to be addressed.” (Plitnick, 98)

When you add to these two “quickie” decisions to the fact Trump suspended funding to the UNRWA, which serves millions of Palestinian refugees and their families[6], Trump’s policies in the Middle East boasted broad approval for Israel’s 75-year project of dispossession and ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine, cutting Palestinians out entirely from many consequential-if-symbolic decisions that wear away at their sovereignty and bargaining leverage. Ultimately, Trump’s sloppy policies proved that as early as 2017, the U.S. was no longer in the business of peacemaking in the Middle East. It’s no wonder there’s a new illegal Israeli settlement named after Trump in the stolen Golan Heights.

Last week, at the American Israeli Council, where Trump bragged about “giving” the Golan to the Adelsons, he again spread the antisemitic claim that American Jews who don’t vote for him are disloyal to Israel. He said of those American Jews who would vote for anyone else, “You should have your head checked.” What a thing for our “stable genius” to say when he has time and again proven he understands nothing about the Middle East except how to make his mega-donors/Netanyahu happy. Palestinians won’t receive justice under a Harris administration either, but I’m certain that Trump’s four years of arbitrary, anti-diplomatic policies set the stage for the wars raging today, wars which will only turn uglier and more criminal if he returns to power.

(Tyler Barton lives in Saranac Lake.)

–

SOURCES:

–

“Trump falsely claims ‘no terrorist attacks’ and ‘no wars’ during his presidency” Glenn Kessler. Washington Post (Jan 2024)

“Arab Peace Initiative” Wikipedia.

“Former President Trump Remarks at Israeli American Council Conference” C-SPAN.com 9/19/2024

Dekel, Udi. Hamas’s New Statement of Principles: A Political Opportunity for Israel? Institute for National Security Studies, 2017. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep08387. Accessed 29 Sept. 2024.

Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics by Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick, (The New Press, 2021) – pages 89-98

“In one move, Trump eliminated US funding for UNRWA and the US role as Mideast peacemaker” Air Hady, Brookings Institute, 9/7/2018

“Trump Abandons Iran Nuclear Deal He Long Scorned” Mark Landler, NY Times, May 2018