Since claiming victory in the U.S. election, President-elect Donald Trump has announced an entirely new slate of cabinet selections, polluted with eager loyalists who will enact his vision for the next four years in America and in Israel.
Across the board, Trump’s cabinet picks spell disaster for Palestine. Trump tapped Republican Sen. Marco Rubio for secretary of state. Earlier this year, Rubio had said he would not call for a ceasefire in Gaza, believing there is “no diplomatic solution available.”
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, who called the UN a “cesspool of antisemitism” for its condemnation of deaths in Gaza, will serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Pete Hegseth, Fox News host and Army veteran with no government experience, was nominated to be the next secretary of defense.
Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and evangelical who supports “Greater Israel,” a term used by extremists to describe the annexation of territory, will be the next ambassador to Israel. “There is really no such thing as a Palestinian,” Huckabee commented in 2008 at a campaign stop.
Rubio, Huckabee and Hegseth have all said that a two-state solution in Palestine is impossible.
Trump’s hawkish far-right cabinet picks signal a dangerous shift in U.S. rhetoric. They are saying the quiet part aloud. It is very possible that the U.S. will oversee the Israeli annexation of the West Bank and settlement of Gaza under Trump’s administration with little to no objection.
“If nothing else, under Trump, the United States will continue to provide unlimited weapons to Israel but without any pretense about concern for civilian lives,” Khaled Elgindy, the director of the Middle East Institute’s Program on Palestine and Palestinian-Israeli Affairs at the Middle East Institute, said.
This administration’s stance on Palestine offers no hope for peace, balance or justice.