Can Trump put ‘America first’ and also make peace in the Middle East?

In his inaugural address, US President Donald Trump stated that his “proudest legacy” as president would be his role as a “peacemaker and unifier.” “We measure success not just by the battles we win but the wars we end,” he said on Monday, following the release of the first Israeli hostages from Gaza under a ceasefire agreement, a move seen as providing him with an early political victory.

Later that day, while signing a series of executive orders in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters he had “no confidence” that the deal, which he is widely credited with brokering, would hold. But he added, “This is not our war; it’s their war.”

Trump has made no secret of his desire to end Israel’s war in Gaza before his own term began, and his re-election was partly due to his promise to put “America First” and reduce intervention in overseas conflicts. But analysts have warned that his early actions, as well as his first four years in office, have shown unequivocally his administration’s staunch support for Israel, even as Trump tries to project a tough image and successfully strong-armed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into agreeing to a deal he had rejected months before.

“All it took was a threat,” Diana Buttu, a Palestinian analyst and former negotiator, told Al Jazeera, praising Trump for using the leverage of his office, something former President Joe Biden never did. “Having said that, I don’t think we should give Trump so much praise and applause because I don’t think that this deal is without its rewards for Netanyahu and without its costs for [the Palestinians].”

Buttu said that if the deal promised rewards, then the first hours of Trump’s term may have hinted at what those rewards were. Trump quickly lifted Biden’s sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of attacking Palestinians in the West Bank. On Tuesday, his nominee for UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, stated at her confirmation hearing that Israel has a “biblical right” to the West Bank. Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has also previously made biblical statements, saying: “There is no West Bank, it’s Judea and Samaria.”

These actions and statements build on what Trump did during his first term as president from 2017 to 2021, including cutting funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees; recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite its occupied Palestinian east; moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; and recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, a Syrian territory.

On Wednesday, the fourth day of the Gaza ceasefire, Israeli forces began raids in Jenin, in the occupied West Bank, killing at least 10 people and raising concerns that Israel will further escalate attacks in the area. The US did not apply pressure, as the ceasefire agreement does not include the West Bank.

“Netanyahu will always get a huge reward out of this,” said Buttu, who also predicted that the president would soon crack down on pro-Palestinian movements within the US, another Israeli priority. “Trump has given the Israelis just about everything they want, and he’s told them, ‘Just don’t keep me up at night.’”

Still, Trump’s suggestion on day one that the ceasefire might not hold suggests that even such rewards may not be enough to get Netanyahu to commit to a ceasefire that he had opposed for months for his own political survival. Ha Hellyer, a political analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London and the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, believes that Trump may already be preparing to blame the potential collapse of the deal he claims to have brokered on someone else – most likely Hamas.

“Trump wanted a deal in order to be able to say that he got a deal,” Hellyer told Al Jazeera, adding that he was “surprised if we even get through [phase one] without more intervention from Washington, DC.” He noted that Netanyahu has repeatedly asserted Israel’s “right” to resume fighting in Gaza – and US support for it – suggesting that there is no real commitment to the ceasefire on the Israeli side.

“Everyone is calling it a ceasefire, but a ceasefire means a commitment not to return to war. We don’t have that commitment so far. And the statements coming from different officials within the Trump administration, and from Trump himself, are not very optimistic on that front,” said Hellyer. “Is Trump going to use the US leverage to ensure that the Israelis get through phase one and all the way to phase three? The signs are not encouraging.”

While Trump has said that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “is not our war,” some analysts say he may have a genuine interest in a legacy as a dealmaker. During his first term, Trump proposed a “peace deal” for Israel and Palestine, which his administration called the “deal of the century,” and he sought to “normalise” relations between Israel and several Arab countries, bypassing the Palestinians in the process. This time around, it is widely expected that he will once again seek a deal that would cement his legacy while also potentially benefiting his business interests in the region.

But normalisation requires a more inclusive political project than the Abraham Accords that Trump pushed during his first term, said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the progressive think tank, the Center for International Policy. “If Trump is serious about wanting peace, as he claims, if he’s serious about wanting a Nobel Peace Prize, if he’s serious about wanting to do what no other president has been able to do, to achieve peace between Israelis and Palestinians and normalise Israel in the region in a real and sustainable way, then achieving a just and fair solution for Palestinians is absolutely essential.”

“The way to approach Trump is to appeal to his own sense of greatness. I think it needs to be shown to him that for a peace and normalisation deal to actually be real and sustainable, and not just a series of arms deals, which is what the Abraham Accords were, it has to provide a truly just solution for the Palestinians,” Duss added.

This is a tall order. Israel has shown no interest in anything that might bring the Palestinians closer to statehood – something that many analysts believe is already an impossibility given Israeli expansion in the occupied territories. This week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the October 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel were a “wake-up call” to its viability.

In addition, there are Trump’s sometimes conflicting allegiances: a large Christian Zionist political base that is firmly aligned with the most right-wing elements in Israeli politics; donors like Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson, who contributed nearly $100m to his campaigns; and partners in the Gulf, such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has so far said that normalisation with Israel is predicated on Palestinian statehood.

For a president who says he wants to put “America First,” it is hard to see how Trump can completely disengage from this conflict. “I do think that Trump is very much an America First person. He doesn’t want to worry about wars. He doesn’t like thinking about them, and he’s repeated that over and over,” said Buttu. “But at the same time, I don’t know who’s going to rein him in.”