WarSclerotic

Could anyone have predicted the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential ‎election? Some managed to — those ‎who doubted the accuracy of the polling samples.

In fact, it is doubtful that ‎credible samples can be formulated, due to the fluctuating social, economic, political, demographic and ethnic environments in the ‎‎435 congressional districts, 50 states and the many counties in the ‎United States.‎

The outcome of the elections for the White House, as well as the 34 Senate seats, ‎‎435 House seats, 12 governorships and 86 of the 99 state legislative chambers, spotlights the ‎reasserted profile of America’s conservative flyover country, with its Joe Sixpacks, blue-dog Democrats, homeland security hawks and evangelical constituency, ‎which was not significantly registered in prior election cycles.

The election was a victory of the anti-establishment and ‎politically incorrect folks over the politically correct media, academia, and ‎political, business and foreign policy establishments.‎

How will Donald Trump’s victory impact U.S.-Israel relations?‎

Like all Western democracies and other U.S. allies, Israel is mostly ‎concerned with the U.S. posture of deterrence, which has played a critical ‎role in restraining global radicalism and reassuring free societies. However, ‎the U.S. power projection has been significantly eroded during President Barack Obama’s administration, generating tailwinds for rogue regimes and headwinds for ‎America’s allies, as has been strikingly demonstrated in the Persian Gulf and ‎the Middle East at large. It has fueled global turbulence, instability and ‎Islamic terrorism, which is asserting itself in Europe and increasingly on the ‎U.S. mainland. ‎

The Trump presidency is expected to reboot the U.S. posture of deterrence ‎by reversing the recent cuts in the U.S. defense budget and the ‎size of the U.S. armed forces — in the face of intensifying ‎terrorism, conventional and nuclear threats to the U.S. and its allies — and ‎replenishing the rapidly depleted and aging U.S. military stockpiles; compensating ‎for the declining purchase power of the U.S. dollar; restoring the size of the ‎armed forces, and reassessing the July 2015 agreement with Iran. This last ‎has caused all pro-U.S. Arab countries to downgrade their confidence in the ‎U.S. posture of deterrence and seek closer ties with Russia.‎

The track records of President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Mike Pence and ‎their foreign policy and national security advisers suggest that U.S.-Israel ‎relations are expected to experience less tension and substantial ‎enhancement, based on shared Judeo-Christian ‎values of liberty and justice, as well as long- and short-term mutual interests ‎and threats, and Israel’s unique and increasing contributions to U.S. ‎commercial and defense industries and to U.S. scientific, technological, and ‎agricultural concerns.‎

Trump and Pence, and most of their ‎advisers on U.S.-Israel relations and foreign policy, are likely to act based on the ‎following 10 understandings‎:

‎1. Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel is a derivative of a unique ‎historical right, enshrined by the early Pilgrims and the U.S. ‎Founding Fathers, rather than compensation for the Holocaust.

‎2. Israel is an effective, unconditional geostrategic ally of the U.S. that extends America’s strategic reach, while employing ‎its own — not American — soldiers, within the framework of a win-win U.S.-Israel relationship.

‎3. The scope of U.S. geostrategic interests, and therefore U.S.-Israel relations, ‎dramatically transcends the Palestinian issue.

‎4. Irrespective of the Arab talk, but based on the Arab walk, the ‎Palestinian issue is not a core cause of Middle East turbulence, nor a center‎piece of Arab policymaking, nor a trigger of anti-U.S. Islamic terrorism, nor ‎the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

‎5. Based on the intra-Arab Palestinian track record — stabbing the backs of ‎their Arab hosts — as well as the relationships between the Palestinian Authority and ‎anti-U.S. regimes and terror organizations, anti-U.S. incitement on the ‎Palestinian street, Palestinian hate-education, and the strategic implications ‎of raging anti-U.S. Arab sentiment, a Palestinian state would be a strategic ‎liability, undermining regional stability and vital U.S. interests in the Middle ‎East.

‎6. The Trump team will probably minimize U.S. involvement in ‎the mediation and negotiation process on the Palestinian issue. The team ‎is aware that the U.S. has introduced numerous Israel-Arab peace initiatives, ‎none of which succeeded. U.S. involvement has always radicalized Arab ‎expectations and undermined prospects for peace by putting further pressure on Israel.

The only two successful peace initiatives, Israel-‎Egypt and Israel-Jordan, were initiated and directly negotiated by the ‎parties involved.

‎7. The Trump-Pence team will not consider Jewish settlements in ‎Judea and Samaria to be an obstacle to peace nor a violation of international law.

‎ ‎8. The Trump-Pence team will recognize that the mountain ridges of Judea and ‎Samaria are critically required for Israel’s existence. This was demonstrated back in the days of President Lyndon Johnson, who was presented with a map by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs ‎of Staff General Earle Wheeler and was told that “the minimum requirements for Israel’s ‎defense include most of the West Bank.” ‎

‎9. The Trump-Pence team is aware that Jerusalem is the ancient capital of ‎the Jewish state, not an international city, and therefore should be the site ‎of the U.S. Embassy in Israel. The refusal to relocate the U.S. Embassy to ‎Jerusalem has undermined the U.S. posture of deterrence, and has strayed ‎from the legacy of the U.S. Founding Fathers, who considered Jerusalem a ‎cornerstone of their moral and cultural worldview, as reflected by the 18 ‎Jerusalems and 32 Salems (the original biblical name of Jerusalem) on the ‎U.S. map.‎

‎10. Trump’s anti-establishment worldview is also targeting the State ‎Department, which has been systematically wrong on Middle East issues, ‎including its 1948 recommendation not to recognize the establishment of ‎Israel, and its current insistence that Jerusalem is an international city. ‎Foggy Bottom will not lead, but will follow, the Middle East policy of ‎the Trump administration, which will not subordinate U.S. action ‎to multilateralism and the United Nations.

The new administration’s perspective on U.S.-Israel relations is consistent with that of the ‎vast majority of the U.S. constituency and the U.S. House and Senate, creating fertile ground for a substantial expansion of mutually beneficial ‎cooperation through congressional and executive initiatives.‎ This provides a unique platform for the dramatic enhancement of U.S.-Israel ‎cooperation in the face of mutual challenges and threats, bolstering the ‎economies and the national and homeland security situations of both countries, aiding U.S. allies, and undermining U.S. foes, and reducing global ‎instability.‎