Palestinians between Trump's threat of hell and Netanyahu's pursuit of "absolute victory"

President Trump made many promises during his last election campaign, but the promise that followed the closing of the ballot boxes was the most difficult, as he said: “If the hostages are not released by January 20th (the date on which he enters the White House), there will be hellish consequences for the Middle East.”

In response to President Trump’s threats and promises, Netanyahu and his far-right ruling coalition insist on achieving an absolute victory over the Palestinians, which makes it legitimate to ask: Will Trump’s expected hell be different from the hell that the Palestinians have known over the past fifteen months? And is there any connection between Trump’s promised hell and Netanyahu’s goal of achieving an absolute and decisive victory over the Palestinians?

Observers have treated Trump’s expected hell with much sarcasm, especially since the Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, live a life described as hell itself. Over the past fifteen months, Gaza has received, and continues to receive, more than one hundred thousand tons of American-made explosives, or approximately 43 kilograms per person, and 278 tons per square kilometer of Gaza’s area, which has led to more than one hundred and fifty thousand Palestinian victims, between martyrs and wounded, if we limit the calculation of losses to humans only. In this regard, the famous British medical journal The Lancet stated in a report published last June that it is expected that the number of martyrs as a result of the Israeli genocidal aggression on Gaza has reached 186 thousand martyrs until the date of publication of the report.

In this regard, Amit Segal wondered in an article published on the Hebrew Channel (N12) website on 1-9-2025: How can Trump create hell on top of hell? In his answer, Segal advised Trump not to force Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza as the current Biden administration did and is doing, and then allow Israel to control part of Gaza’s small geographical area.

Here I add to what Segal said that Trump’s second term, which will begin in a week, does not herald a new era that is less bad than the era of President Biden, who has deeply engraved the name of the United States of America in history, not only as a partner in the genocide of the Palestinian people, but also as a major actor in the annihilation of the principles on which the international system is based, and as a destroyer of the law and values that regulate human rights to a decent life.

As for the Palestinians, President Trump will certainly go further in his hostility and denial of Palestinian rights than Segal advised, which can be inferred from his team, who are known for their hostility to Islam, Muslims, Palestinians, and Iran, and most importantly, for their view of Palestine through the Iranian lens, which entails serious threats to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the West Bank, and Iran as a Middle Eastern state.

As for the absolute victory that Israel has been seeking since the beginning of its genocidal war on Gaza, on the one hand Netanyahu has not specified the criteria for this absolute victory, and on the other hand many experts in Israeli national security believe that absolute victory is an unachievable goal in the conflict with the Palestinians, and some of them have gone so far as to say publicly that the war on Gaza is evidence of the failure of Israel’s military approach.

The above shows that the Palestinians in the current year 2025, that is, in the first year of Trump’s term, will be between Trump’s hell, which has become clear that he will not break the Palestinians, despite the high costs it entails, and Netanyahu’s absolute and unachievable victory, which deepens the failure of the military approaches of both Israel and its partner and primary protector, the United States of America, and forces them to search for other approaches that produce political solutions that the Palestinian people will accept.