Israeli right celebrates hawkish Donald Trump government picks

The Israeli right has rejoiced after US president-elect Donald Trump nominated ardent supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran hawks to his incoming administration.

Nominees including Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defence secretary, and Mike Huckabee, the future US ambassador to Israel, were adored on the Israeli right for their unflinching support for Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon. Huckabee has also supported their desire to annex the occupied West Bank.

Steve Witkoff, an American-Jewish real estate tycoon set to be Trump’s Middle East envoy, is also a prominent pro-Israeli voice in the US.

Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who has worked with Netanyahu, said: “The Israeli right is thinking of moving independence day to November 13. They could not have dreamt of appointments like these . . . it’s a major blessing.”

The appointments project “strength, determination, and this is a good thing for the US but also good for us”, Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, told Israeli Army Radio on Wednesday. “This doesn’t mean that everything we want they’ll say yes, but I think the attitude will be that of someone who understands the situation.”

Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right minister of national security, posted “Mike Huckabee” on X alongside emojis of a heart and American and Israeli flags.

Others, such as incoming UN ambassador Elise Stefanik and mooted secretary of state Marco Rubio, are also known for their staunch support for Israel.

A video of Rubio telling pro-Palestinian activists in the halls of Congress that he rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, shortly after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack triggered the war, went viral across Israeli social media this week.

“I want them to destroy every element of Hamas they can get their hands on,” the Florida senator said of Israel. “I think Hamas is 100 per cent to blame [for the civilian deaths in Gaza] . . . Make sure you post that please.”

Stefanik, a New York congresswoman, needed little introduction to the Israeli public, with her broadsides against US university presidents last year over allegedly unchecked campus antisemitism garnering mass attention.

Senior ministers in the Netanyahu government — the most far-right in Israel’s history, which includes many settlers — are making plans for the coming Trump administration.

On Tuesday, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said 2025 would be “the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria”, using the Jewish biblical name favoured by Israeli nationalists for the West Bank, which Palestinians see as the heart of a future state.

Huckabee used the same terminology for the territory when asked on Israeli Army Radio on Wednesday whether the Trump administration would greenlight annexation.

Trump “already demonstrated in his first term, that there has never been an American president that has been more helpful in securing an understanding of the sovereignty of Israel”, Huckabee said. “I fully expect that to continue.”

In his first term, Trump reversed years of US policy with pro-Israeli moves including recognising Israel’s claim to sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights and moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, which is disputed between Palestinians and Israelis.

Huckabee and Rubio are extremely well-known to the Netanyahu government, said a person familiar with Israeli thinking, with both having visited Israel’s prime minister on several occasions over the past year.

Hegseth’s nomination also received extensive attention, helped in part by a 2022 interview with the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 in which he admonished Joe Biden’s administration for actively undermining Netanyahu and his Likud Party.

“We have a deep state in America, there’s a deep state in Israel as well — [Netanyahu] had to fight through that,” Hegseth said at the time.

Since Trump’s election last week, Palestinian Authority officials such as President Mahmoud Abbas who were sidelined during the US president-elect’s first term have congratulated him but remained largely quiet on his administration picks.

One prominent Palestinian activist in East Jerusalem, Samer Sinijlawi, said he could easily see the incoming Trump appointments “being a catastrophe” for the Palestinian cause.

But he summed up the sense among many Palestinians that Biden had been disastrous during the past year of conflict. “I’ve never seen a president accept such humiliation” like Biden did from Netanyahu, he added.

“If Trump wants to do something then these aides will fall in line. He knows he’s the centre of the world,” Sinijlawi said.

Despite adulation for Netanyahu from the incoming Trump administration, some Israeli analysts and officials observed the president-elect is an unpredictable figure with his own priorities.

“There could still be challenges, and you may see a ‘bearhug’” from the Trump administration that could limit what Israel does, said Shtrauchler, the political strategist.

The person familiar with Israeli thinking said there is an understanding among Israeli officials that the US president-elect would like to “resolve the situations” in Lebanon and Gaza and does not want to see “all-out regional war between Iran and Israel”.

“It’s not like Bibi will have free rein,” the person added. “There was definite euphoria last week [when Trump won], and there is still great happiness now, but it’s a bit more realistic . . . Netanyahu and his people know they need to deliver.”