So far, US President-elect Donald Trump has chosen a group to take over key ministerial portfolios and sensitive positions in a manner that satisfies the Israeli Prime Minister in an unprecedented manner, given their staunch support for Israel, their deep-rooted right-wing tendencies, their personal love for Netanyahu, and their support for settlements, in a manner that could not have been imagined before Trump’s announcements.

In the wake of his election victory last week, Trump initially signaled to isolationist “America First” supporters that they would play a key role in transforming his foreign policy — a stark warning to pro-Israel hawks who had assumed he would offer something similar in his support for Israel to what he had offered in his first term.

But with his ministerial appointments coming at a rapid pace during his first full week as president-elect, he quickly assembled a foreign policy team with a clear and detailed worldview that was inherently hostile to Iran, dismissive of any Palestinian national aspirations, and reticent to (potential) American pressure on Israel’s goals or condemnation of its conduct in the war.

Experts believe that the fact that the foreign policy appointments — including the U.S. ambassador to Israel and the envoy to the Middle East — came before many others only indicates how much of a priority the Middle East will be for Trump, despite initial assumptions that he would focus first and foremost on Ukraine, which is what the U.S. ambassador-designate to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a radical evangelical evangelist, sees as a way to do.

Experts believe that Trump’s appointments not only represent a full embrace of the pro-Israel, pro-settlement, and pro-West Bank annexation hard-right, but also encourage Netanyahu to believe that he will get the green light to pursue any strategy he deems necessary. This includes a more aggressive approach to Iran, and the most visible trend since the 1967 occupation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza (which is occupied by the Israeli occupation authorities and has been completely destroyed). So who are these appointees of the senior members of foreign policy and national security, and what do these appointees want from the Palestinians?! Let’s start where Trump began with his second appointment (after appointing Susie Rales as White House chief of staff):

1- Elise Stefanik: The president-elect has selected Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY, 40) to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, and she is more ideologically ardent in her support for Israel than Trump’s previous UN ambassador, Nikki Haley. “I am honored to nominate Committee Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my administration as the US Ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump said in a statement. “Elise is a strong and very smart fighter for America First.”

Stefanik, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House, a staunch ally of the president-elect and a major GOP fundraiser, has played a pivotal role in launching what experts say is a “crusade” to stoke anti-Semitism over the past year. Miriam Adelson, the Israeli widow of billionaire Sheldon Adelson, has been lavished with millions of dollars in awards for Stefanik’s campaigns, allowing her to infiltrate Trump’s political machine.

There are no clear substantive differences between Stefanik and Haley; Stefanik has strongly denounced the Biden-Harris administration for not adequately arming Israel, alleged that Biden has kowtowed to China—and condemned his withdrawal from Afghanistan on principle.

2- Senator Marco Rubio: Florida Senator Marco Rubio, if anyone knows anything about him, is known for his dedication to “loving Israel.” The Israeli lobby organization “AIPAC” successfully supported him with money and organization in the November 2010 elections when he was 39 years old. Since then, he has been a staunch supporter of everything Israel does, and he has used his Cuban origins, which his parents emigrated from in 1957, as an excuse to condemn the Palestinians who are supported by his home country, Cuba.

Rubio did not say a single word last year sympathizing with the suffering of the Palestinians. Rather, he took every possible opportunity as a platform to justify the Israeli war of extermination. He did not utter a single word about the necessity of ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state on the occupied Palestinian territories.

Rubio's selection is likely to reassure both Israel and traditional Republicans that Trump intends to maintain his strong support for Israel in his second term, amid concerns about an inner circle pushing an isolationist approach.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, the Republican Party’s most vocal pro-Israel group, welcomed Rubio’s potential nomination when it was first reported on Monday. “In these unusually dangerous times, Senator Rubio is an outspoken advocate for Israel and has consistently stood with the Jewish state,” the group said in a statement.

Rubio used the harshest terms to describe the students who have been, and continue to be, protesting Israel's war on Gaza, as did Stefanek, who said she wanted to beat up students who are protesting against Israel.

3- Pete Hegseth as Minister of Defense: The candidate for the position of Minister of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has cynically ignored the Palestinian civilian casualties while working as a host on Fox News, which is supposed to have prepared him to oversee the largest army in the history of the world. Although he is inexperienced, has no distinguished record, and is unknown, he participated in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan (as a reserve), and developed a strong racism against Arabs and Muslims, and has often launched scathing attacks on the Palestinians in his programs on the pro-Israel Fox network, considering all citizens of Gaza as partners in the attack of October 7, 2023.

It is noteworthy that Hegseth is considered one of the most ardent supporters of the settlement movement and the annexation of the occupied West Bank. He said in 2018 during a visit to occupied Jerusalem: “There is no reason why a miracle cannot happen; the re-establishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount.”

4- Michael Waltz, US National Security Advisor: He publicly called for allowing Israel to “finish the job,” i.e., eliminate the remaining Gazans, and allowing Netanyahu to do whatever he wants “to finish the job.”

Although he is married to a Jordanian woman, Julia Nesheiwat (who worked at the Department of Homeland Security as an advisor until Trump left the White House in 2021), there is no evidence that his marital relationship has had a positive impact on his views on the Palestinian issue. Nesheiwat served in the US Army as a captain (three stars) and as a military intelligence officer during the US invasion of Iraq.

The National Security Advisor is considered one of the most important positions in the National Assembly, ahead of the Minister of Defense, and sometimes the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

5- John Ratcliffe, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA): Ratcliffe may be the most experienced appointee in the field of intelligence, as he served as Director of the National Intelligence Agency for 7 months at the end of the first term of US President Donald Trump.

He also called for giving Netanyahu a free hand "to complete the mission" and for Israel to share all the intelligence and intelligence assets that the United States possesses.

6 – Mike Huckabee, US Ambassador to Israel: By appointing right-wing settler Yehiel Leiter as Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Netanyahu sent an indisputable signal to Washington and the world that annexation will be at the forefront of his agenda going forward. All eyes were on Trump’s ambassadorship to Israel to see if he would choose an annexationist like David Friedman, and that’s exactly what happened. By choosing Huckabee, an evangelical Christian with a longstanding connection to the settlement movement and a deeper history of advocating for annexation than Friedman, Trump made the expected policy crystal clear.

Huckabee's appointment also serves as a straightforward and narrow interpretation of what it means to be pro-Israel, considering that this was the motivating factor behind his appointment.

Given that extensive polling shows that American Jews view defending democracy as the most important issue in the 2024 election, and that a majority of American Jews are critical of the Israeli right, Trump’s appointment of Huckabee gives further credence to Netanyahu and Ron Dermer’s belief that Israel’s base of support lies in the evangelical community and the Israel lobby AIPAC, not American Jews.

Trump’s appointments, if anything, suggest that Trump remains determined to prioritize Israel’s regional integration and expand the normalization agreements known as the “Abraham Accords,” given the outright rejection by key Trump appointees of a Palestinian state—a key demand of countries like Saudi Arabia—as well as open suggestions from figures like Huckabee that Saudi Arabia or Egypt should offer their own territory for a future Palestinian state.

The observer will quickly discover that every Trump appointment so far related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a prior relationship with Netanyahu. Even the new US envoy to the Middle East, Steven Witkoff, who has no diplomatic experience at all and is a real estate mogul, attended Netanyahu’s July 24 speech to a joint session of Congress and used the interview he gave afterwards to retract any criticism of the Israeli prime minister.