Trump presidency buoys Israel, rattles Palestinians

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was one of the first Arab leaders to congratulate Donald Trump on his election win on Wednesday, but analysts say a Trump presidency may be profoundly negative for Palestinian aspirations while buoying Israel's confidence.

Israel's right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, expressed confidence that he and Trump could work together to bring US-Israeli relations to "new heights" and his office later said that Trump, in a phone conversation, had invited him to a meeting in the United States "at the first opportunity".

Abbas appeared to hold out some hope that Trump, with no clear foreign policy programme, may turn a new leaf when it comes to the Middle East, a statement said.

That may be wishful thinking.

During the campaign, Trump won support in Israel with a promise to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all but enshrining the ancient city as Israel's capital. While that has been promised many times by presidential candidates in the past, Trump is the sort of leader who may well make it happen, and he would likely have full backing from the Republican-dominated US Congress, too.

If it does occur, it would override decades of international diplomacy that holds that the status of Jerusalem is not finalised until a negotiated settlement is reached between Israel and the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their state, together with the West Bank and Gaza.

Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett, a right-wing party leader who backs Israeli settlement building and opposes a Palestinian state, made the implications of Trump's win very clear in a rapidly released statement.

"The era of a Palestinian state is over," Bennett said.

Meanwhile, Iran wants all parties to stick to an international nuclear deal but has options if that does not happen, its foreign minister said yesterday after the US election victory of Trump, who has vowed to pull out of the pact.

The Republican Trump called the nuclear pact a "disaster" and "the worst deal ever negotiated" during his election campaign and said it could lead to a "nuclear holocaust".