The hopes and fears of Palestinians as Trump returns to the White House

Tel Aviv – After more than a year of bombing and homelessness, Gazans are looking to the new administration in Washington for help. President-elect Donald Trump's election victory has raised hope and fear among the five million residents of the Palestinian territories – the The torn Gaza Strip and the Israeli-controlled West Bank.

Gaza resident Rakan Abdul Ahman told CBS News that he wants the new US president to get Israel to end the war.

“We have seen enough of the killing of women and children,” he said. “I am looking for Trump to end the suffering in the Gaza Strip.”

In the eyes of Ahmed Harb, a journalist from Gaza, the incoming Trump administration is facing a real test. In his victory speech, Trump said he would end wars. Harb hopes that means the Gazan.

“I hope he was telling the truth,” he told CBS News, adding: “But he must not stop the war at the expense of the Palestinian people.”

That is a major concern of Palestinian politicians, too, including Mustafa Bargouti. Still a practicing physician, he heads the Palestinian National Initiative, a group fighting for a democratic government for all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

The question, Bargouti said, is “how do you stop the war? Do you stop it by taking the occupied territories? By ethnically cleansing the Palestinians? Or do you stop the war by forcing Israel to end its illegal policy of settling Israelis on our land?”

Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, which resulted in the killing of about 1,200 people by the US and an Israeli-designated terrorist group on October 7, 2023, diverted international attention from the escalation. violence in the West Bank by Israeli settlers determined to enter the territory that was the land of Palestine.

In 2023, there was a record number of so-called outposts – temporary Jewish camps set up by settlers in what used to be Palestinian territory. They can be as simple as a few shipping containers that serve as a de-facto claim to Jewish real estate. Settler groups then lobbied Israeli courts and the government to re-establish the outlying areas as legal Jewish settlements.

Right-wing members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet support Jewish expansion, including settlements, in the West Bank. They are openly advocating to expel the Palestinians, and annex the whole area to Israel. Not only would that be illegal under international law, Bargouti warns, it would also lead to more conflict.

“We will fight for our rights,” he said. “It will take time. We will suffer. We know that. But what is the other way? Stop existing? Ethnic cleansing. We will not accept that.”

Palestinians everywhere have watched Trump appoint pro-Israel officials to key positions with dismay, especially Mike Huckabee, the president's nominee to be the next US Ambassador to Israel.

Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, is on record as saying, “there really is no such thing as a Palestinian.”

“If you hear someone like Huckabee saying that there are no jobs, and there are no settlements, only Israeli communities…. he might say that there is no international law,” Bargouti said.

During Trump's first term, he opposed the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and, in 2020, proposed what he called the “deal of the century” – a template for the long-sought Palestinian state.

Under his proposal, the new state would be a breakup of separate Palestinian territories, each surrounded by Israel. This plan was rejected by both the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers and, since then, both sides have entered.

Even if the new Trump administration revives some form of its Palestinian state proposal, it will face Palestinians and their Arab allies whose resolve has been hardened by a year of war in Gaza that has killed nearly 44,000 people.

On the Israeli side, hardliners in Netanyahu's government oppose any form of Palestinian sovereignty. Netanyahu himself has it he completely rejected hope repeatedly.

However, Bargouti sounded ready for war.

“I'm sure it's going to be a tough year for everybody,” he told CBS News. “But no matter what happens, we the Palestinian people will never give up our right to fight for our freedom.”