Can Trump keep pre-poll promise to ‘end wars’ in Gaza and the Middle East?

Donald Trump’s “greatest comeback” to the White House marks a stunning revival in the political fortunes of the Republican leader facing multiple criminal cases.

Trump defied pollsters and media predictions of a tight race to beat his Democratic challenger Kamala Harris by a fairly wide margin, becoming only the second man in US history since Grover Cleveland in 1892 to win two non-consecutive terms as president.

As the dust settles, the spotlight will turn to the big question: what next?

How will Trump’s extraordinary rise to the world’s most powerful political position affect Israel’s bloody war in Gaza and other conflicts in the greater Middle East?

Since October 7, 2023, the US has been increasingly drawn into the multiple conflicts ravaging the region, especially the skirmishes between Israel and Iran.

Trump conveyed a message of peace during his victory speech on Wednesday, saying, “I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars.”

Analysts, however, assert that the president-elect’s words have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

“It’s still too early to say if Trump will fulfil his promises to end the war in the Middle East and the world,” says Yousef Alhelou, a Palestinian political analyst.

He draws attention to the dire possibility that Trump could even “accelerate” the Gaza war by allowing Israel to intensify its suppression of Palestinians.

Palestinians do not expect Trump to be a pro-Palestinian president because they believe that “ending the war” is a political slogan meant to serve his election campaign, according to Alhelou.

Palestinians accuse Washington of being complicit with the Netanyahu government’s war crimes and genocide in Gaza, Alhelou says, adding that the people in the occupied territories would want the new Trump administration to force Israel to end the occupation and comply with international laws and human rights norms.

Can Trump be different?

Palestinians believe that all the American presidents - either Democrats or Republicans - have always pursued the same policies when it comes to Israel’s occupation of their native lands, he says.

“But maybe Trump will surprise us. We will see whether he is genuinely interested in ending the war,” Alhelou tells TRT World.

The Arab-American community in the US has largely voted for Trump because they hope that he might have a real motive to end the war, says the Palestinian analyst. And this could have played a critical role in some states like Michigan, a swing state, to turn red.

During a public interface in Dearborn, Michigan, which has a sizable Arab-American population, Trump responded to a question on the Gaza situation by saying: “It got to stop. We got to do something that is going to make everything run. What we want is peace.”

According to Ecaterina Matoi, a scholar at the Middle East Political and Economic Institute, though Trump took many pro-Israel decisions – like recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, accepting Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and mediating the Abraham Accords between several Gulf states and Tel Aviv during his first term – he might take a different approach this time around.

But this approach might not translate to acceptance of a Palestinian state because many financial supporters of the Trump campaign are Zionist groups advocating Israeli interests and a tough stance against Iran and its allies, according to Matoi.

In this sense, Iran’s relations with Russia and China and its admission into the non-western BRICS alliance could also have a bearing on the second Trump administration’s actions vis-a-vis the Palestinian conflict, she says.

“All these speak of a certain dose of uncertainty and unpredictability regarding America's foreign policy under the new Trump administration in the region,” Matoi adds.

“However, let's hope Trump will keep his word and at least stop the wars and the ongoing slaughter in Gaza…and for all other issues, he will resort to diplomacy and negotiation.”

Following Trump’s victory, analysts have pointed out that Trump might be tempted to make good on his promise of playing the peacemaker to end the conflicts in different parts of the world.

Matoi points out that Trump capitalised on “magical words” like “stopping the wars” – such as the Ukraine conflict – to woo Americans who feel that the Biden administration was using their taxes to fill Israel and Ukraine’s war chests.

“...(T)he Biden administration neglected the concerns of some segment of the population that empathised with the people in Gaza,” Matoi tells TRT World.

According to Sami al Arian, a leading Palestinian academic, at least 25 million active voters “decided to boycott this election because they could not bring themselves to vote for either candidate”, which is “the big story of this election”, offering an analysis similar to Matoi’s view.