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Trump 2.0 and Palestinians: From Reversal to Repression and Deportations By Dr Steinbock
The first Trump administration overrode all previous policies of the United States of America concerning the Palestinians. The new one avoids genocide of civilians. It prefers cultural genocide. Thus, I detail the behavior of all postwar administrations in relation to the Israelis and Palestinians in my just published book titled The Fall of Israel (2025). The first Trump administration was not only different from its predecessors but also had some specific features which had been discussed further in detail.
Trump 2.0 and Palestinians: From Reversal to Repression and Deportations By Dr Steinbock Photo Credit: CREW
The first Trump administration erases the policies of the United States from the past forty years concerning the Palestinians. The new one is averse to genocide and massacres. It prefers cultural genocide.
In the sequel to my previous works, The Fall of Israel (2025),I review the performances of all the postwar administrations in their relations with the Israelis and Palestinians. It can be therefore seen that the first Trump administration was not only different from the preceding ones. It completely reversed a policy that was practiced by the US for half a century over the issue of Palestinians. In the next four years, The Trump White House will complete this change.
The Great Reversal
Soon after the arrival of the new administration to the White House in January 2017, Trump appointed David M. Friedman as the US ambassador to Israel. Recorded cases show that Friedman acted and counsel for Trump and his organisation in the bankruptcies encompassing Trumps’s Atlantic City casinos. As a revisionist Zionist donor, he was an investor of millions of dollars in unlawful, hate-promoting West Bank settlement communities.
During one of the recent speeches, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that Israel would no longer restrict the construction in West Bank settlements, Trump turn a blind eye to it. These facts prove that in 2016 there were more than 400 thousand Jewish settlers in the occupied territories of the West Bank. Trump’s the “peace to prosperity plan” keeps all the settlers under Israeli sovereignty; no settlement will be evacuated. Today we see that due to Trump and Biden families’ administration there are over 750 000 settlers.
Later on, the United States officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocated the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In 2018, Trump cut all the PLO’s office in Washington, D.C., and also cut nearly all US contributions to the West Bank and Gaza as well as the $360 million in aid for the UNRWA every year.
Subsequently, in the period 2020-21, actualisation of the normalization of relations between the USIsrael and the UAE took place in a bilateral accord, accompanied by similar agreements between Israel and Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. The common factor among the signatories of the “Abraham Accords” was the relations with the US military and intelligence. For many years, Palestine issue had been ignored by the US foreign policy. Now it had been effaced from this geographical gazetteer, leaving behind a mere name of a city with no historical significance.
He has regional ambitions that negatively impact the Palestinian state that is already recognized by the United Nations with more and more recognition from the global community.
The Trump administration will condemn Biden for genocide in Gaza and advocate for transforming a comprador Palestinian leadership. It is likely to facilitate further West Bank settlement development and Israel’s consolidation of control over the territory. It will promote Jerusalem as the capital of the country. It will capitalize on the opportunity to scale down the operations of the UNRWA if it can.
Frontline against barbarians
According to many political analysts, the Trump administration can be described as one that is characterized by transactional politics, which is synonymous with opportunism. However, the principles that his advisors, and insiders promote are an unremarkable fusion of western democracy, militant approach and ultra-conservatism and God-fearing doctrine. He would have more of a transactional cabinet, but the latter would be limited by these ideologues.
A pro-Trump right-wing personality and former football player, Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defence in the Trump administration partially agrees with such an assertion by stating that Zionism is America’s frontline against anti-Western ‘barbarians’. Hegsetth has been associated to the ‘Temple Mount establishments that have called for the construction of a new Temple instead of the Mosque of Omar and al-Aqsa. Still, rooted into violent settings, such measures may bring the zone to flames.
Since Trump appointed David Friedman, the incumbent Governor of Arkansas, as the US ambassador to Israel, the latter said that he does not recognize the existence of a Palestinian state. Thus, supporting the permanent control of Israel over the occupied territories, he is concerned with the Christian Evangelical perception of the restoration of the Jews to the Land of Israel as fulfilling the biblical prophecy.
Marco Rubio, who became the Secretary of State of Trump, also supports Netanyahu’s Israel and/or an ultra-hawkish revisionist Zionist regime. In the past half a decade, the top contributors of Rubio’s campaign finance feature pro-Israel America PAC and Republican Jewish Coalition. He is also the recipient of $1.6 million out of large individual contributions. During the Wednesday telephone conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Rubio emphasized that “Trump highly valued continued support of America in supporting Israel”.
Jared Kushner is Trump’s Middle East Envoy and he is passionate Zionist real estate tycoon, a personal friend of Trump and a Jewish donor. The position favors priority. relative to Rubio – a relatively special envoy is probably going to mean that Witkoff can overcome Rubio in some essential topics of Israel/Palestinian. Witkoff more or less seems to envision the realization of a Jewish state in a region dominated by the Gulf empires. He is Trump’s eye and ear in the Gaza ceasefire and handler of the Iran portfolio.
What all these key actors have in common is strong support for Israel, connections to Israeli lobbyists and sometimes in their religious beliefs in Israel – and the practical willingness to accept a Jewish state as homogenous as possible from Palestinians.
Suppression and deportations
Something that Trump administration might not like much is the planned mobilization to characterize “pro-Palestinian” elements in America as terrorists, deport Palestinian activists and use all these to quell democracy.
To act in the best interest of Zionism and the Israel lobby, Elise Stefanik, who received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Aipac, gave national television coverage to an inquisition of leading university presidents on antisemitism. Stefanik demanded that students be deported because they are members of a mob who are advocates of Hamas and who are standing for the elimination of Israel. She then called for a review of American’s support to the UN in October after she said it harbors “extreme antisemitism.”
Stefanik can now put the words into practice as Trump’s UN ambassador, as seen through her confirmation hearings. She also dodged the chance to come out in support of Palestinian self-determination when asked. When pressed if she agrees with this view of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and ex National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, those at the far-right of the Israeli politics that include West Bank is the biblical land of Israel, Stefanik answered “Yes”.
From the same campaign finance, Stefanik, therefore, had $15,300,234 for the financial year 2023-24. From an individual, the top funding supplier was AIPAC but the largest fund suppliers were big Individual contribution $2.9 million and ‘Other’ contribution $8.7 million. Most of the money came from powerful Jewish Republicans such namely as Ron Lauder, the heir to cosmetics; mogul Marc Rowan, proprietor of casinos Steve Wynn; Blackstone’s management, and Trump’s ex-ambassador David Friedman as a result of her interrogation to university presidents.
They can be seen in light of Jeff Sessions’s attorney generalship and Pam Bondi’s calls for visa repeal and condemnation of campus demonstrations. Another loud voice of suppression and deportation’s is Rep.Brian Mast who is the newly elected chairperson of the house foreign affair committee. Similar to other Israel far-right politicians, Mast dismisses the concept of Palestinians non-combatants supporting punishment. An evangelical Christian, he volunteered with the Israeli military in 2015 and was wearing his IDF uniform later in Congress after October 7, 2023. Mast’s legislation would end all US funding for the virtually defunct refugee agency, UNRWA. Ignoring the call for a truce in Gaza, he demands increasing arms supply to Israel.
In October last year, Rubio urged then secretary of state Antony Blinken to do an immediate full review and coordination effort to rescind the visas of the people who endorsed or supported Hamas’ terrorism. In this regard, his nominees on the domestic front have endeavored to turn the protest movement supporting Palestinians into an American question.
The approach outlined above might be as follows: Template for initiatives: Further repress.
More importantly, Kash Patel can be viewed as the script writer of Trump’s operation being an FBI hand. It is configured in Project Esther, an anti-antisemitism proposal revealed by the Heritage Foundation with the apparent mission to fight antisemitism. The dressing down of the government and its reformation according to its own neoconservative Project 2025 plan is part of the thinktank’s vision.
Project Esther wants to state that “The ‘pro-Palestinian movement’ that is raging in the United States is not only anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, and anti-American but is part of the Hamas Support Network.” Therefore, they call for the abolishment of infrastructure which is dedicated to the undermining of capitalism and democracy. This movement aims at taking advantage of the highly questionable Antisemitism Awareness Act that may be used to label those who wish to criticize Israel as anti-Semites while at the same time seeing a vast decrease in freedom of speech in America.
As it stands, if Project Esther gets implemented, the Trump crackdown aims will deport protesting students in America and go after the universities’ tax exemption status. Though designed to fight antisemitism, it could be useful for other homegrown activities aimed at silencing the opposition and political activism. In this self-destructive enterprise, the Palestinians serve as a convenient scapegoat and collateral damage.
