Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential elections held on November 5th continues to give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's mouthpieces an incentive to fly high in everything related to Israeli expectations of him during his second presidential term, which will begin on January 20th, 2025.

Perhaps the important thing when reading these expectations is to probe the desires that this flight entails regarding the reality related to the fate of the war on the Gaza Strip, the future of the Palestinian cause, and other regional issues, foremost among which is the conflict with Iran.

From the flood of comments that resulted from this flight, we can point out the most prominent of these desires: The first desire is that Trump, during his second term, which will be free from many controls and restrictions in light of the fact that he cannot run for another presidential term, will return to pursuing a foreign policy that was described during his first presidential term (2020-2026) as being outside the box of American foreign policy. Some even went so far as to imagine the scenario that could have been achieved in reality if Trump had managed to defeat current US President Joe Biden and continued in his second presidential term directly from his first term. According to this scenario, Trump would have continued to exert enormous economic pressure on Iran and its agents, to turn his back on the United Nations institutions, to punish the Palestinians for their traditional rejection of the dictates of peace with Israel, and to advance the path of normalization with Arab countries according to the model of the "Abraham Accords."

Those who support this scenario assert that the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden has put an end to all this deviation from the usual American foreign policy box that Trump adopted, and quickly returned to flirting with the Iranian regime and its agents, especially in Lebanon, as well as flirting with the Palestinians.

Pro-Israel Management

It is also noteworthy that there is a focus on the list of key appointments announced by Trump regarding the composition of his administration, which, according to Amnon Lord, chief political commentator for the newspaper "Israel Hayom" (11/15/2024), indicates a new American administration that is, to say the least, pro-Israel. Most of those appointed are people who support Israel ideologically, stand in solidarity with it, and want to provide it with the utmost support. Accordingly, Israel expects this new American administration, which supports it, according to Lord, to take the initiative to implement two immediate tasks: canceling the sanctions imposed by Washington on elements of the Israeli right, and neutralizing the United Nations institutions in The Hague (meaning the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court), and then confronting Iran and its nuclear program and attempts to expand its regional influence.

A quick rundown of Netanyahu’s comments on Trump’s appointments suggests that most are favorable, with the two governments likely to see eye to eye on many issues of common interest. In particular, the incoming secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is seen as a pro-Israel figure. Rubio will work with new national security adviser Mike Walz, a Florida congressman who has taken a tough line on China. Also on the foreign policy team is Alice Stepanek, the incoming U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Stepanek has become famous in the hearings that major American universities such as Harvard, Pennsylvania and MIT have undergone, following the demonstrations against the war of genocide in Gaza. There are expectations that Stepanek will continue the pro-Israel approach, as Nikki Haley did in the previous Trump administration.

Mike Huckabee was also appointed US ambassador to Israel. Huckabee has a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has repeatedly expressed support for Jewish settlers and for Israel to annex parts of the West Bank. In 2019, he said he believed Israel had the right to annex parts of the West Bank. Steven Witkoff, a Jew and close Trump confidant, was appointed US envoy to the Middle East, John Ratcliffe was appointed CIA director, and Fox News host Pete Hegseth was appointed defense secretary.

US interests first

However, in contrast to these trumpets, Israeli experts on American affairs stress that it is necessary to remember that Trump is still Trump, he cares about the interests of the United States, first and foremost. He will stand by Israel as long as it is an asset to his goals. One of these experts (Professor Yossi Shain) said that it is important to remember that in his previous term, Trump presented the “Deal of the Century” plan prepared by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, which ultimately spoke of a two-state solution for two peoples. In addition, in the new Middle East that Trump seeks to promote, there are other friends of the United States, and they too have their own interests.

Meir Ben-Shabbat, former head of the National Security Council and current head of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, summed up the matter by saying that the new appointments in the upcoming Trump administration carry good news for all those who see Iran as a threat to peace and stability in the world and the root of all evil in the Middle East. They also indicate an intention to return to the approach of confronting the Iranian regime and its followers by adopting a firm policy of confrontation against it based on interests, power and influence.

Ben Shabbat stressed at the same time that in order for such a policy to prevail, Israel must achieve victory in the war it is currently waging in order to prove to the new American administration that it is still a security, technological and economic asset for it in the Middle East region (“Israel Hayom,” 11/15/2024).

one-sided relationship

At this point, we should remember that Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister of Israel has been characterized throughout, in terms of bilateral relations with the United States, by seizing any opportunity to showcase what a “gold mine” Israel represents for the United States, beyond the prevailing belief that the special relations between the two countries are one-sided, meaning that one party, the Israelis, benefits from them almost completely, while the benefit of the other party, the Americans, has been and continues to be minimal, if at all.

In this context, memory was periodically refreshed of the "security services" that Israel provides to the United States, which remain the best guarantee for maintaining the special relations between the two countries. In the opinion of circles close to Netanyahu, it is more appropriate to say that the United States no longer provides foreign aid to Israel, but rather invests in it, which return annual profits of hundreds of percent. Not to mention that Israel has become a low-cost laboratory for the American security industries, in which more than 4 million Americans work, and this is in ideal conditions, since this "laboratory" is engaged in real combat on more than one front, and is used in both economic and operational aspects, as it also improves the performance of American forces. The most prominent example of this is the Israeli Air Force’s use of the F-16 and F-35 aircraft produced by the American company Lockheed Martin. According to several experts, the force sends daily reports to this company and the US Air Force that include lessons learned from military operations and maintenance and repair work. These reports contribute to the development of these two aircraft models and the improvement of the next generation of them, and the US Air Force benefits from them in its operations.

Israel.. the largest aircraft carrier

To complete the circle in this regard, we note that from time to time, signals are issued by senior officials in the United States that confirm this Israeli narrative from the point of view of Washington’s benefit. Among these is the consideration by former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, from the Democratic Party, during a visit she made to the Israeli Knesset several years ago, that the establishment of the State of Israel constitutes the greatest political achievement of the twentieth century, and that the security bond between Israel and the United States is very close and the friendship between them is eternal. Among the previous signals that are difficult to enumerate is the statement by General Alexander Haig, who served as the Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and US Secretary of State during the Cold War, that Israel “is the largest aircraft carrier in the world that has no American soldiers on board, cannot be sunk, and is anchored in a sensitive security and economic region.

Israel also saves the United States tens of billions of dollars annually in expenses related to the production and installation of aircraft carriers and additional military brigades in the Indian Ocean, the Middle East and the Mediterranean.

At the height of the Cold War in 1986, General George F. Keegan, who served in US Air Force intelligence, said that he would not have succeeded in gathering the intelligence he obtained from Israel even if he had five CIA agencies at his disposal. His statements were made in the context of a press interview at the height of the Cold War, during which he added: “The ability of the US Air Force in particular and the Army in general to defend their position in NATO owes more to the intelligence provided by Israel than to any other intelligence source!”

What we can conclude from what these people say is that the security relations between the United States and Israel are characterized by a special nature that no change in American administrations can change.