Deals and schemes

Promises to broker peace are nothing new for US President Donald Trump. But Trump is no ordinary US president. Many Palestinians are encouraged by the fact that he does not seem bound by the usual lobby-influenced ideologies and commitments of US political parties. In their view, a US president who puts “America first” surely will see the absurdity of spending so much political and financial capital on Israel, which provides little strategic ben- efit to the US, at the cost of greater instability in the Middle East. Trump’s image as a deal maker reinforces this hopeful narrative. While his promises to strike “the ultimate deal” are not backed by much detail, they remain appealing to Palestinians, who have grown frustrated with a peace process that has had little impact beyond allowing Israel to expand and consolidate its occupation of Palestinian land. This is not to say that Palestinians blindly trust the Trump administration to determine their fate.