Donald Trump’s shock election as president will likely result in a US tilt towards Israel that puts a Palestinian state even further out of reach, his own campaign team and analysts say.
Hardline lawmakers, including some from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said Trump’s win represented a “historic opportunity” to abandon ideas of Palestinian statehood and move towards annexing the West Bank.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the religious nationalist Jewish Home party and is seen as having ambitions to be prime minister, said “the era of a Palestinian state is over.”
While so much about Trump’s thinking on the Middle East remains unknown, he and his advisers have spoken of overturning decades of precedent by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocating the US embassy from Tel Aviv.
Trump said in March that “there’s nobody more pro-Israel than I am,” adding that he would oppose any attempt to force Israel into an agreement it opposes.
The president-elect’s adviser on Israel, David Friedman, said last month that he does not believe Trump sees Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as illegal, as nearly all the rest of the international community does.
Asked whether he believed in the two-state solution, the basis of more than two decades of peace negotiations, Friedman said Trump was “tremendously sceptical”.
The Israeli right has welcomed such statements and seized on Trump’s victory to promote its cause – including, for some, a call to bury the two-state solution once and for all.
Netanyahu, whose government is considered the most right-wing in Israeli history, has so far been more cautious.
Analysts say that may be because he is wary of Trump’s notorious unpredictability.
As an example, they cite a statement by Trump earlier in the campaign in which, to the alarm of Israelis, he described himself as neutral in the Middle East conflict.
While Netanyahu and Hillary Clinton may have ideological differences, he at least knows where she stands and what to expect, they say.
Netanyahu congratulated Trump and pledged to work with him, and the two men spoke by telephone on Wednesday.
“The two leaders, who have known each other for many years, had a warm and heartfelt conversation,” a statement from Netanyahu’s office said.