LONDON: On Nov. 5 many Arab Americans, disenchanted with the Biden administration’s failure to curb Israel’s deadly military interventions in Gaza and Lebanon, abandoned their traditional support for the Democratic party and voted in record numbers for Donald Trump.

As revealed by an Arab News/YouGov poll in the run-up to the US presidential election, Arab Americans believed that Trump would be more likely than Kamala Harris to successfully resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict — even though he was seen as more supportive of Israel’s government than his opponent.

They also felt that Trump would be at least as good for the Middle East in general as Kamala Harris.

Now, however, as Trump reveals his picks for the key roles in his administration, it is becoming clearer what impact that protest vote might have on the Middle East, and on Palestinians.

Some of the hires will have to be approved by Senate hearings. But amid talk that Trump’s team is planning to bypass vetting by making so-called recess appointments, many of the choices have raised eyebrows in Washington.

In terms of what Trump’s new team might mean for the Middle East in general, it is perhaps enough to know that Israel is celebrating both Trump’s victory and his picks for key positions.

“Some of the announcements,” commented The Jerusalem Post, “like a new ambassador to the UN and Israel, as well as for an incoming national security adviser and special envoy to the Middle East, are all positive developments in terms of shaping a team that will be supportive of Israel, and strong in the face of adversaries, such as Iran.”

According to a CNN report, current and former US officials have cautioned against assuming that the intelligence community is uniformly opposed to Trump. Across the 18 agencies that include thousands of analysts and operators, there are plenty who support him and likely welcome his return.

Marco Rubio — Secretary of State 

The appointment of Rubio, a Florida Republican senator known for his advocacy of a muscular US foreign policy, appears at odds with Trump’s oft-professed intention to see America withdraw from its role as the world’s policeman.

One of the “20 core promises to make America great again” in his Agenda 47 manifesto was a pledge to “strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world.”

On the other hand, Trump has promised to ensure that “our government uses that great strength sparingly, and only in clear instances where our national interests are threatened.”

In 2016, when he ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio repeatedly criticized his rival’s isolationist foreign policy, saying “a world without our engagement is not a world we want to live in.

Rubio, a former member of the Foreign Relations Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence, doubtless brings a great deal of foreign-policy experience to the Trump team, along with a reputation for being a hawk, ready to take a hard line on Iran and China.

He also brings a strong commitment to Israel.

In footage of a 2023 confrontation between Rubio and activists of the group CODEPINK in Washington, Rubio replied, when asked if he would support a ceasefire, “No I will not,” adding “I want (Israel) to destroy every element of Hamas.”

Pressed to say if he cared about “the babies that are getting killed every day,” he replied: “I think it’s terrible, and I think Hamas is 100 percent to blame.”

Following Iran’s missile attack on Israel in October — carried out in retaliation for Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh in Tehran — Rubio defended Israel's “right to respond disproportionately.”

Israel, he added, “should respond to Iran the way the US would respond if some country launched 180 missiles at us.”

In a tweet on Wednesday after his nomination was confirmed, Rubio said he would work to carry out Trump’s foreign policy agenda and under his leadership “we will deliver peace through strength and always put the interests of Americans and America above all else.”

Pete Hegseth — Secretary of Defense 

Many in Washington — and everyone in the Pentagon — are still trying to digest the news that the new man chosen to be in charge of America’s vast military machine is a 44-year-old presenter on Fox News, Trump’s favorite TV channel.

Hegseth, a co-host of the program “Fox & Friends Weekend” who has regularly interviewed Trump on the show, has been a staunch critic of “wokeness” in the military, demanding the sacking of any “general, admiral, whatever” involved in promoting the previous Democratic administrations’ agenda of diversity, equality and inclusivity.

Furthermore, he has spoken out in defense of US soldiers accused of war crimes committed in the region, condemning “the betrayal of the men who keep us free” in his latest book, “The War on Warriors.”

During Trump’s first term in office, he lobbied successfully for presidential pardons for three US soldiers who had been charged with, or had already been found guilty of, war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Hegseth’s on-the-ground military experience has given him a grunt’s perspective on warfare. He rose to the rank of major in the Minnesota National Guard and served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But according to a statement from Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, he is “undoubtedly the least qualified nominee for (defense secretary) in American history, and the most overtly political.”

Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, himself a veteran, was more direct. Hegseth’s nomination, he said, is “the most hilariously predictably stupid thing” that Trump could have done.

Or dangerous. Clues to Hegseth’s worldview can be found among the many tattoos he sports. They include the 11th-century Latin Crusader rallying cry “Deus Vult,” “God wills it,” alongside a large “Jerusalem cross,” the symbol adopted by the Crusaders who sacked Jerusalem in 1099, slaughtering tens of thousands of Muslims and Jews in the city.

In the US the symbol is associated with far-right white nationalist movements. In 2016 Hegseth, then in the national guard, was withdrawn from guard duty at Biden’s inauguration because of the tattoo.

Steven Witkoff — Special Middle East envoy

A real-estate tycoon and a long-time friend and golfing buddy of Trump’s, Witkoff has no diplomatic experience but is an uncompromising friend of Israel.

When President Biden paused weapons shipments to Israel in May because of concerns about Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Witkoff responded by raising millions of dollars for Trump’s presidential campaign from wealthy US Jewish donors.

After attending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in July, Witkoff told Fox News “it was spiritual … it was epic to be in that room.”

Witkoff has no known experience of diplomacy or the Middle East. Nevertheless, Trump said in a statement, “Steve will be an unrelenting Voice for PEACE, and make us all proud.”

Witkoff will now be point man for Trump’s two big unfulfilled ambitions for the Middle East: an Israel-Palestine peace deal and normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Kingdom has made clear that the latter is dependent upon meaningful progress toward sovereignty for the Palestinian people. Witkoff’s views on that are currently unknown, but it seems unlikely they would differ greatly from those of others in the new administration for whom the creation of a Palestinian state is anathema.

Mike Huckabee — Ambassador to Israel

Of all Trump’s appointments, the one that has been received most rapturously in Israel is the naming of the former governor of Arkansas as America’s new ambassador to the country.

The appointment is seen by the Netanyahu government as a sign not only that the new administration will allow Israel to continue its provocative settlements campaign in the occupied territories, but also that Trump is giving the green light to plans for the full annexation of the West Bank.

Huckabee has always been a staunch defender of Israel. He once said there was “no such thing as a Palestinian,” suggesting the term was nothing more than a “political tool to try and force land away from Israel.”

He has taken part in at least two cornerstone-laying ceremonies at new Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. At one he attended in 2017 he said there was “no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”

Unsurprisingly, his appointment has been welcomed by far-right Israeli ministers, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister who has led repeated provocative incursions by extremist settlers into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who sent congratulations to “a consistent and loyal friend.”

On Monday Smotrich said Trump’s victory represented an “important opportunity” to “apply Israeli sovereignty to the settlements in Judea and Samaria,” the Jewish biblical names for parts of the West Bank. The year 2025, he added, “will, with God’s help, be the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.”

Elise Stefanik — Ambassador to the UN

A decade ago, aged 30, Stefanik was the youngest member of Congress. Since then, she has drifted from the center of the Republican party to the right. In the process, she has become a strong supporter of Trump, defending his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election result and describing those arrested for their part in the assault on the Capital as “Jan. 6 hostages.”

She has also been a vocal ally of Israel, which she has visited many times.

In 2023 she won praise from the US Jewish community for her aggressive questioning during a congressional hearing of college leaders, whom she accused of turning a blind eye to antisemitism during campus protests.

In March, she was honored for her stance at the Zionist Organization of America’s “Heroes of Israel” gala, where she was given the “Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award.”

In her acceptance speech, Stefanik criticized Joe Biden’s “unconscionable actions and words that undermine the Israeli war effort.” She would, she said, “always be committed to supporting Israel’s right to defend itself … and I will continue to stand with Israel to ensure (it has) the resources it needs in this darkest hour.”

On Thursday the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories found that “Israel’s warfare in Gaza is consistent with the characteristics of genocide, with mass civilian casualties and life-threatening conditions intentionally imposed on Palestinians there.”

As US ambassador, Stefanik — who has been openly critical of the UN for what she calls its “entrenched antisemitic bias” — will be perfectly positioned to push back against such claims.

The Washington Post predicted that Stefanik “will use her position at the United Nations to assail UN agencies and diplomats over any criticism of Israel, and air long-standing Republican grievances over the workings of the world’s most important multilateral institution.”

Michael Waltz — National Security Adviser

Florida Congressman Waltz, a former colonel in the US Army with multiple tours of Afghanistan and Iraq and four Bronze Stars to his name, is one of the few top-level Trump hires who brings relevant expertise to his new job.

A former special forces Green Beret, he served as a defense policy director for secretaries of state Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates — and navigating Washington’s corridors of power is a skill that runs in the family.

His wife is Julia Nesheiwat, the daughter of Jordanian immigrants who came to America in the 1950s. She is a former captain in the US Army’s Intelligence Corps and served in Afghanistan and Iraq. She also held national security roles in the Bush, Obama and previous Trump administrations.

Waltz is a member of the Kurdish-American Caucus in Congress, which “promotes knowledge and understanding of the Kurds, a distinct group of over 30 million living in Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Syria, the US and elsewhere globally.”

The Caucus believes that Kurdistan is “a beacon of stability and security in Iraq, deserves strong US support,” and is “a vital ally in protecting US interests in Iraq and the entire region.” Iraqi Kurdistan, it says, is not only “vital to any vision of a peaceful and prosperous Iraq,” but also “critically serves as a break in the crescent from Iran to Lebanon.”

Waltz’s appointment, the Kurdistan 24 network commented, is “very good news for the Kurds.”

Tulsi Gabbard — Director of National Intelligence 

In October 2019, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton suggested that Gabbard, who at the time was a Democrat and a rival for the party’s backing, was being “groomed” by Russia, and that her foreign policy views echoed Russian interests.

Since then, the former Democratic congresswomen has switched sides, becoming an independent in 2022 and joining the Republicans this year.

Clinton’s unproven accusation is all the more startling now that 43-year-old Gabbard is about to be put in charge of more than a dozen intelligence agencies, from the FBI to the CIA.

Like many of Trump’s picks, Gabbard is a military veteran. She served in the Hawaii Army National Guard with tours of duty in Iraq and Kuwait. In Iraq from 2004 to 2005 she was part of a medical unit, where, she has said, “every single day, I was confronted with the very high human cost of war.” That experience, she added, shaped her outlook on America’s military adventures.

“I was not the same person when I came home from that war as I was when I left,” she said, “and it’s why I am so deeply committed to doing everything I possibly can to making sure that not a single one of our men and women in uniform, not another service member, has their life sacrificed in the pursuit of wars that have nothing to do with keeping the American people safe.”

On the campaign trail in 2019 she became known as the “anti-war presidential hopeful,” criticizing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan for having taken “trillions of dollars out of our pockets for health care, infrastructure, education, for clean energy.” America, she said, must “end these wasteful regime-change wars.”

That, however, was then. Gabbard is, after all, no stranger to U-turns, having abandoned the Democrats for the Republicans. In a cabinet full of hawks such as Marco Rubio talking tough on China and Iran, it remains to be seen if the head of the world’s biggest spy machine is still keen to rein America in.

John Ratcliffe — Director of CIA

John Ratcliffe, a former representative from Texas, has been chosen by Trump to serve as the CIA director. He currently serves as co-chair at the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-linked think tank. Ratcliffe served as the director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021 during Trump’s first term. A CNN report said Ratcliffe “is seen as a largely professional and potentially less disruptive choice than some other former officials believed to have been under consideration.”

Alina Habba — Trump attorney

Alina Saad Habba, a senior Trump adviser and attorney, said she was not considering the role of press secretary, for which she was hotly tippled before it went to Karoline Leavitt on Friday. An American lawyer and managing partner of a law firm based in New Jersey, Habba has been a legal spokesperson for Trump since 2021 and a senior adviser for MAGA, Inc., Trump’s Super PAC. Her parents were Chaldean Catholics who emigrated from Iraq to the US in the early 1980s.
 

QALANDIA: In the crowded Qalandia refugee camp, UNRWA’s training center is an island of calm where young people from the occupied West Bank master trades, but a recent Israeli ban on all cooperation with the UN agency has left the center in limbo.
On the spacious campus, a stone’s throw from the wall that separates the West Bank and Israel, plumbers in training assemble pipes, future electricians wire circuits, and carpenters hammer together roof frames.
But how long these scenes will last is an open question after Israel last month banned UNRWA, founded in 1949, from operating on Israeli soil or coordinating with Israeli authorities.

UNRWA’s ban in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem has raised fears that its West Bank employees could face problems not only accessing those areas but also moving around more generally because they would lose the ability to coordinate with the Israeli authorities manning checkpoints.
The same fears apply to visas and permits delivered by Israeli authorities.
Eighteen-year-old Ahmed Naseef, a refugee from the Jalazone camp north of nearby Ramallah, said he did not know what he and his classmates would do should the Qalandia training center close as a result of the law.
“It would disrupt my fellow students. Many don’t have the financial means to study at another institute. Here, it’s almost free,” he said during a class where he was learning how to install lights in a room.
“We imagine that we’re setting up a bedroom and a bathroom, installing lights, outlets, and power points,” said the student, who has been a trainee for two months after graduating high school.
“If it closes, I might consider going to university,” he said, adding that this had been his original intention, but his current circumstances “don’t allow for that.”
Jonathan Fowler, UNRWA spokesman in Jerusalem, warned that if some of the services could not continue, the socioeconomic consequences could be “potentially disastrous.”
“If these services are not able to operate ... who is going to provide education for the children and the adolescents in this camp?“
Baha Awaad, the school’s principal, said it trains 350 students but cannot provide for more due to the lack of permission to expand buildings.
Asked whether the students could finish their school year, Awaad admitted: “Frankly, we don’t know.”
“We’re operating as usual, not wanting to spread fear. We reassure students that we’re doing our best to continue teaching here,” he said, adding that worried students had already approached him.
As for what would happen should the school close, Awaad said: “That depends. They’ll be left without options if it’s a permanent closure.”
Fowler said there was no sustainable alternative to his agency’s varied work on such a large scale.
“You can’t just flick a switch, and UNRWA disappears and someone else steps in,” he said.
“The law is very unclear on many fronts,” he continued, so “what the intention is, how that would be operationalized is extremely uncertain.”
Tensions between UNRWA and Israel began after Israel accused about a dozen of the agency’s staff of taking part in Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
A series of probes found some “neutrality-related issues” at UNRWA.
They determined that nine employees “may have been involved” in the Oct. 7 attack but found no evidence for Israel’s central allegations.
A quarter of the West Bank’s 912,000 refugees live in 19 camps, according to UNRWA, and many rely on various services provided by the agency’s 3,800 West Bank staff.
One such recipient, teenager Naseef, graduated from a UNRWA school and received health care from one of its clinics.
In his camp, he said: “The situation is especially hard for the clinic, which many people rely on for medications and treatments. If it shuts down, they’ll be cut off.”
Back in Qalandia camp’s narrow alleys, among murals of deceased Palestinian fighters, a nurse at the crowded UNRWA clinic said there was no viable alternative for residents should her facility close.
At the nearby UNRWA primary school for girls, headmaster Rana Nabhan said she “doesn’t know” whether her students will finish the school year.
Unaware of the challenges, a crowd of giggling schoolgirls run around in bright-colored bibs during gym class, bringing the courtyard to life.
Just over their shoulders is another mural in Arabic: “I love my beautiful school,” it reads.