How the US election could affect the Middle East

The last time Donald Trump was president, the Israeli prime minister was so excited, he named a community after him.

Trump Heights is an isolated cluster of prefabricated houses in the rocky, mine-strewn landscape of the Golan Heights, an eagle statue and menorah guarding the entrance gate. Purple mountain peaks rise into the azure sky on the horizon.

This was Trump’s reward for reversing half a century of US policy – ​​and a broad international consensus – by recognizing Israel’s territorial claims to the Golan, captured from Syria in the 1967 war and later unilaterally annexed.

The question for residents there — two dozen families and a few enlisted soldiers — is what impact Republican nominee Trump or Democratic rival Kamala Harris might now have on Israel’s interests in the region.

Elik Goldberg and his wife Hodaya moved to Trump Heights with their four children for the safety of a small rural community.

Since the October 7 Hamas attacks in southern Israel last year, they have watched Israel’s war with Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, escalate along the northern border with Lebanon, 10 miles away.

“For the past year, our beautiful open green space has a lot of smoke, and our great view is a view of the rockets that Hezbollah is sending at us,” Elik said. “This is a war zone and we don’t know when it will end.”

Elik tells me he wants the new US administration to “do the right thing.” When I ask what that means, he says “support Israel”.

“Support the good guys and have a good sense of right and wrong,” he says.

It’s the kind of language you hear a lot in Israel. It’s also the kind of language Trump understands.

He won the favor of Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu during his last term as US president by ditching a nuclear deal with Iran that Israel opposed, negotiating historic normalization deals with several Arab countries and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, countering decades of American politics.

Mr Netanyahu once called him “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House”.

As America prepares to vote, the Israeli leader has made no secret of his admiration for the Republican nominee — and polls suggest he’s not alone.

About two-thirds of Israelis would prefer to see Trump back in the White House, according to recent polls.

Less than 20% seem to want Kamala Harris to win. According to one poll, that drops to just 1 percent among Netanyahu supporters.

Gili Shmuelevits, 24, a shopper in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market, said Ms Harris “showed her true colours” when she appeared to agree with a protester at a rally who accused Israel of genocide. The vice president said “what he’s talking about is real.”

She later clarified that she did not believe Israel was committing genocide.

Rivka, who shops nearby, said she was “100 percent for Donald Trump.”

“He cares more about Israel. He is stronger against our enemies and is not afraid,” she said. “I realize people don’t love him, but I don’t have to love him. I need him to be a good ally for Israel.”

For many people here, good allies never pressure, criticize or coerce. The war in Gaza has helped create a rift between Israel and its American ally.

Harris was more outspoken in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and placed more emphasis on humanitarian issues.

After meeting Netanyahu at the White House in July, she said she “will not be silent” on the situation in Gaza and said she expressed her “serious concern about the extent of human suffering” and the death of innocent civilians.

Trump has framed the end of the war in terms of Israel’s “victory” and has opposed an immediate cease-fire in the past, telling Netanyahu to “do what you have to do.”

But many Palestinians see little hope in either candidate.

“The general assessment is that the Democrats are bad, but if Trump is elected, it will be even worse,” said Mustafa Barghouti, a respected Palestinian analyst and politician in the occupied West Bank.

“The main difference is that Kamala Harris will be more sensitive to changing American public opinion, and that means more in favor of a ceasefire.”

The war in Gaza has increased pressure from US allies such as Saudi Arabia for progress towards a Palestinian state.

But none of the candidates put the establishment of a Palestinian state at the top of their agenda.

When Mr. Trump was asked during the presidential debates if he would support it, he said, “I’d have to see.”

Many Palestinians have given up on the promise of a Palestinian state — and on US support in general.

“The general feeling is that the US has failed drastically to protect international law, it has failed the Palestinians several times (and) it has taken the side of a total bias against Israel,” Mustafa Barghouti said.

“The issue of a Palestinian state is nothing more than a slogan.”

On broader regional issues such as Iran, the two candidates have historically had different approaches, with Trump recently advising Israel to “strike the nuke first and worry about the rest later.”

He spoke before Israel carried out strikes on Iran in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack earlier this month.

“Maybe Trump would play more and the Iranians would be more hesitant if he were president,” said former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Danny Ayalon, but he says it’s easy to exaggerate the differences between the two candidates.

Both Harris and Trump are now talking about striking a new deal to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, and both want to expand normalization agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia.

What would be different is their approach.

“I think if it’s Kamala Harris (in the White House), the direction will be from the bottom up,” Danny Ayalon said, meaning the cease-fire in Gaza and Lebanon would come first, before moving on to the bigger questions. of Iran or the new regional alliances. .

With Trump, he says, “the direction would be top-down — he’ll go straight to Tehran and from there, try to sort out all the different parts and theaters in the Middle East.”

Political pundits in Israel and the US see Kamala Harris as closer to America’s traditional bipartisan positions on Middle East foreign policy — and Donald Trump as unpredictable, reluctant to involve America in foreign conflicts and prone to making ad hoc deals .

But Ambassador Ayalon believes that it is not only politics that has an impact on the public mood in Israel.

“Biden has been with Israel all year,” he said. “But he didn’t get his recognition (because of) things like not being invited to the White House — things that are more optical than real issues.”

When it comes to US-Israel relations, he says, public gestures — and emotions — matter.

“A lot of it is personal. (Shared) interests are a given, but personalities matter.”

From now until the US election on 5 November, BBC correspondents around the world explore the impact their result could have where they are and what people around the world are making of this White House race.