“As we speak, things are happening very productively on the Middle East …I think it’s more complicated than the Russia-Ukraine, but I think it’s easier to solve.”
US President-elect Donald Trump has said he thinks “the Middle East is going to get solved,” calling the situation “an easier problem to handle” than Russia and Ukraine.
“I think that the Middle East is an easier problem to handle than what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine. Okay, I just want to say that up front. The Middle East is going to get solved,” Trump said in an interview with Time Magazine published on Thursday.
Read the full transcript of Trump’s Person of the Year interview https://t.co/E73RqVwk2V
— TIME (@TIME) December 12, 2024
“As we speak, things are happening very productively on the Middle East,” he added, “I think it’s more complicated than the Russia-Ukraine, but I think it’s easier to solve.”
Netanyahu’s ‘Assurances’
Asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave him assurances about when he would end the war, Trump said “I don’t want to say that, but … I think he feels very confident in me, and I think he knows I want it to end. I want everything to end.”
When asked whether he trusts Netanyahu going into a second term, Trump takes a second before answering, “I don’t trust anybody.” https://t.co/Dp6XtJlufm
— TIME (@TIME) December 12, 2024
Trump said he doesn’t “want people killed,” adding “I don’t want people from either side killed, and that includes whether it’s Russia, Ukraine, or whether it’s the Palestinians and the Israelis and all of the, you know, the different entities that we have in the Middle East.”
Pressed on specifics about “the productive” happenings on the Middle East, Trump would not elaborate.
‘Two-State Solution’
On the question of his support for a two-state solution, Trump said “I support whatever solution we can do to get peace.”
“There are other ideas other than two state,” he continued, “but I support whatever, whatever is necessary to get not just peace, a lasting peace.”
“It can’t go on where every five years you end up in tragedy. There are other alternatives,” said Trump.
Asked whether “there’s a scenario” where he would allow Israel to annex the West Bank, the president-elect said, “I’m not saying that’s a very likely scenario, but I want a long lasting peace, a peace where we don’t have an October 7 in another three years.”
Trump, who has been named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year, was also asked whether he trusted Netanyahu.
His response: “I don’t trust anybody.”
Smotrich’s Hopes
Last month, the Israeli news outlet, Ynet, cited a senior Republican Senator close to the president-elect as saying that “Trump will not approve annexation” of the West Bank.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said earlier in the month that he hoped the incoming Trump administration would recognize Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank, according to a YNet report.
“The year 2025 will be, with God’s help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” Smotrich reportedly said.
In July, the International Court of Justice issued a landmark advisory opinion that declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and urged the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
(The Palestine Chronicle)
