Facing Trump 2.0, Palestinians voice rising concern: What’s our plan?

A phone call to President-elect Donald Trump, an appeal to Saudi Arabia, checking in with Tiffany Trump’s Lebanese American in-laws, or just hoping for the best.

Palestinian officials are pursuing a hodgepodge of diplomatic overtures to secure a productive relationship with a new Trump administration, five years on from a falling-out with the last one.

Yet in the face of Israeli annexation threats and the prospect of a Trump Cabinet of settler sympathizers, this diplomacy is doing little to lessen a sense of disarray and despair setting in across the West Bank.

From the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership to individual political factions and civil society groups, there is a distinct lack of a plan should relations with Trump 2.0 sour or the Israeli government give in to settler demands.

“Eventually I think annexation is coming. After Gaza, there is no doubt among Palestinians in the West Bank, that we are next,” says Xavier Abu Eid, a political scientist and former adviser to Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership. “The question is, What are you going to do? No one has that answer.”

Palestinian officials are quick to cite a phone call by PA President Mahmoud Abbas congratulating Mr. Trump the day after the election as a reset of fraught relations from his first presidency.

Ties were strained in 2018 when Palestinians objected both to Mr. Trump’s relocating of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and to his peace plan. What was billed as the “Deal of the Century” entailed Palestinians surrendering claims to East Jerusalem and 30% of the West Bank, and offered cantons with limited self-determination rather than statehood.

The spat saw Mr. Trump cut funding to the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, the United Nations organization providing relief for 5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, and Lebanon.

New beginning with Trump?

Mr. Abbas’ call “broke the ice and warmed relations,” and along with ongoing contacts with Ms. Trump’s Lebanese American father-in-law, Massad Boulos, “we might be in a new phase with President Trump,” says Ahmed Majdalani, a senior PLO official close to Mr. Abbas’ inner circle.

“This isn’t the old Trump – his political narrative is more realistic,” says Mr. Majdalani. “He understands he faces challenges in this region that threaten his political goals.

“We are acting out of goodwill that we can cooperate with the Trump administration to achieve our shared interests of regional peace and stability, and we look forward to this cooperation,” he says.

Yet causing unease are the nominations by Mr. Trump of several prospective Cabinet members or other key officials who are vocal or financial supporters of Israeli settler groups that are violently driving Palestinian families off their lands.

Chief among these picks is Mike Huckabee – for ambassador to Israel – who refers to the West Bank by the biblical names Judea and Samaria and once said, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”

In the wake of Mr. Trump’s win, seen by some settler groups as giving them a green light, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared 2025 as a year for annexation. Mr. Smotrich, who has ministerial responsibility for settlement construction, urged “professional work to prepare the necessary infrastructure to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.”

Short of annexation, there are fears of the revival of the “Deal of the Century” – and the United States once again withdrawing funds to strongarm the PA, which cannot pay its salaries and is facing an imminent surge in demand for services due to Israel’s recent ban of UNRWA.

Also dampening Palestinians’ hopes: the stalling of multiple cases against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the war in Gaza and the occupation of the West Bank.

The ICC has yet to issue arrest warrants for Israeli or Hamas officials as requested by its prosecutor in May, and an advisory opinion by the ICJ on the occupation has had little impact.

Palestinian officials who regarded international law as a trump card that could leverage a Gaza cease-fire and a day-after plan that would revive the two-state solution now describe it as “weak,” “slow,” and “ineffective.”

“International law is too slow and too literal when applied to Palestinians,” says Omar Awadallah, deputy foreign minister for multilateral relations, who coordinates the cases. “We must fight for our rights and for international law itself. We have to remain hopeful.”

“The Saudi card”

Despite the overtures to the U.S., Palestinians are pinning their hopes not on Washington, but on Riyadh.

“Saudi Arabia holding on to the two-state solution is our only hope left,” says Mounir al-Jaghoub, a senior Fatah official and aid to PLO Secretary-General Hussein al-Sheikh, a key leader in the Palestinian government. “We don’t have any other cards left. Our only card is the Saudi card.”

The key, Palestinians believe, is the U.S. and Israeli desire for a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal – coveted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who described it in September as “a true pivot of history.”

Yet Saudi Arabia is conditioning such an agreement on an end to the war in Gaza and steps toward Palestinian statehood.

And in that way, Palestinians hope, Saudi Arabia can act as a bulwark against Israeli policies favoring annexation and against the more extreme members of the new Trump administration.

Saudi Arabia is currently chairing a committee comprising Arab and Islamic states and the Palestinians to coordinate diplomacy surrounding the war in Gaza and obstacles to Palestinian statehood. Palestinian and Arab diplomats say the committee has seen the closest high-level cooperation between Saudis and Palestinians in their history.

Saudi Arabia has resumed funding for the PA, sending some $10 million per month, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman used his strongest language yet this month when he condemned “genocide” in Gaza.

This marks a stark reversal from when the crown prince, during the first Trump administration, was eager to broker the Trump peace plan and pressed the Palestinians for concessions.

“This is not the same Mohammed bin Salman and not the same Saudi Arabia,” says one Palestinian diplomat. “They realize that the peace and stability in the region that they require cannot be achieved until the Palestinian issue is solved. Until then, everything can be ignited in an instant.”

Short on solutions

Yet should Saudi Arabia soften its position, or hard-line elements within either Israel or the U.S. win out, Palestinians have no backup plan to speak of.

Palestinian factions, parties, and civil society groups have yet to articulate a strategy should the West Bank deteriorate or the U.S. once again pressure the PA. When asked what they would do, none could answer.

The PLO, the umbrella organization representing Palestinian parties, with the exclusion of Hamas, warns that any unilateral Israeli action or American pressure to annex lands would lead them to scrap the 1993 Oslo Accords with Israel.

“If annexation happens, all international agreements and treaties are null and void. Oslo will be null and void,” Mr. Majdalani says. “We will not act as business as usual.”

The lack of official solutions weighs heavily on the Ras Al Ain Bedouin encampment in Al Auja. Nestled in the Jordan Valley, it is in the heart of a swath of territory Mr. Netanyahu entertained annexing in 2020 during the first Trump administration.

Residents in this community of 750 people in aluminum-sided shacks face waves of settler attacks and daily harassment, have had their U.N. aid cut, and are unable to access the nearby water spring. Mr. Trump and annexation threats offer more worries.

“On the ground, we are already annexed. We are living under Israeli military rule,” says Ayad Kaabneh. “What more can Trump and Netanyahu do?”

He pauses to reflect.

“But if the Palestinian Authority is finished, we are finished.”