‘It will be harder for us’: Palestinians weigh impact of Trump’s election victory | West Bank

Tthe waiters in Ramallah’s cafes and the tenders at their falafel stands all had more or less the same question: is Donald Trump’s victory good or bad? That is a question reserved for outsiders. Palestinians in the West Bank’s largest city already seem to have reached a tentative consensus: that the US election result has no real impact here, because things couldn’t possibly be worse.

“It won’t make a big difference,” said Eyad Barghouti, a retired university teacher, expressing a common sentiment as the Gaza war rages on. “What Biden did before with a low profile, Trump will be more vocal about.

“Biden would say publicly, ‘We’re not trying to starve Gaza, we’re trying to give them food aid,’ all the while supporting Israel’s army. (Trump) will make it clear that we’re trying to get rid of such and people like that.He doesn’t want to play the game of trying to make himself sound like a humanitarian.

All the worst possible consequences of Trump’s victory – the loss of freedom, the erosion of justice, economic collapse and, for US allies, the possible intervention of an aggressive neighbor and devastating wars – are already a reality for most Palestinians, many of them argue.

Those in the West Bank point out that they only have to look at their social media feeds to see today’s equivalent of Guernica, Dresden or Grozny being streamed live from Gaza. They say that when it comes to the strip, the liberal order mourned this week across the West was not just a bystander. The bombs delivered it.

“What we have seen has made us believe that the whole Western ideology is a lie,” said a librarian in his 50s, who preferred that his name not be used. “They’ve never cared about us. What they care about is Israel’s best interests. That’s the only thing they can all agree on.”

While the initial brave response in Ramallah is that Trump’s restoration will not significantly change the region’s disastrous trajectory, many recognize that there is still room for the Palestinians’ already bleak outlook to darken further.

Barghouti said “the violence could get worse” and that Trump in the White House could add unpredictability to the despair. “It’s like a monkey holding a bomb,” he said. “You don’t know when he’s going to throw it or where he’s going to throw it.”

Lama Sheikha, who works in a printing company, said the US election result would “make Israel even stronger”. “I believe more and more that it is Israel that makes the decisions, not the United States. The US goes with them, ready to help,” Sheikha said.

A Trump administration is far more likely than the current US government to go along with Israel’s intended destruction of the UN aid agency UNRWA, which provides basic services to 871,000 Palestinians in the West Bank as well as virtually all of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants. Trump suspended US funding for UNRWA in 2018.

While Gaza’s economy has been nearly wiped out, GDP in the West Bank has fallen by more than 20% over the past year and the employment rate is now around 35%. And it could be worse. It is probably only pressure from the Biden administration that has prevented the far-right Treasury Secretary, Bezalel Smotrich, from permanently withholding all customs taxes that Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. Without these revenues and Unrwa, the West Bank would almost be an economic wasteland.

Meanwhile, the wave of settler violence against Palestinians has increased exponentially in the past year. Many have been killed or injured by militant settlers while harvesting olive groves, which are often set on fire. In the early hours of Monday this week, a gang of masked militant settlers infiltrated as far as Al-Bireh, a suburb of Ramallah, threw petrol bombs at cars and buildings and shot at firefighters trying to reach the site.

One of the few punitive measures taken by the Biden administration in the last few months has been to impose sanctions on some of the militant settler leaders. It is debatable what effect these measures have had on the ground, but they were nevertheless denounced by Republicans as anti-Israel. It’s a fair bet that a Trump administration would drop them.

“People are already leaving. They are being forced to leave,” said Sheikha. “Now it will happen on a larger scale, it will be more difficult for us with the economic situation, and people will be attacked on their land while harvesting olives.”

She said she understood those who chose to flee, but she vowed she would not be among them. “No matter what they do, they will not force me out of my country.”

Palestinian aspirations for full nationhood, already at low ebb, have suffered another devastating setback with Trump’s re-election, a fact celebrated by Israeli settlers.

“The threat of a Palestinian state is off the table,” Israel Ganz, the head of the Yesha Council, the umbrella settler organization, declared Wednesday in a statement welcoming the US outcome. “This is a historic moment and an opportunity for the settlement movement … Now, with the election of President Trump, it is time to also change the reality of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) to ensure that it will forever be part of Israel and to ensure the security of the Jewish state.”

Trump has yet to pick his team, but it’s fair to say his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his former bankruptcy attorney turned ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, are likely to have the president-elect’s ear. Both are staunch supporters of the settlements, and Friedman has produced a book advocating the complete annexation of the West Bank.

Annexation is already done by stealth. Smotrich has begun a process of transferring parts of the West Bank from military to civilian control, a step toward absorption into Israel.

Barghouti and his librarian agreed that by enabling more overt extremism on the Israeli right, a Trump White House would have the virtue of removing a veil from the brutal realities of the Middle East and might provoke a response.

The librarian pointed to the rise of Hezbollah in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Shia militia became a formidable force that contributed to full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and 2006. He said: “We hope for the same. here – real resistance.”