WASHINGTON- During months of campaigning, Donald Trump said he wanted the war in Gaza to end, even if would have setting a timetable for Israel to complete its campaign against Hamas in the Palestinian territory before his inauguration.

He also warned at the Republican convention that if Hamas does not release its hostages before January 20, it will pay “a very heavy price”.

But will the campaign’s wish translate into concrete results? And will he succeed in securing the return of the hostages – a goal shared by Israelis and Jews of all political persuasions?

The answers depend, Middle East policy experts say, on details that Trump has not yet offered; on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces pressure that extends well beyond Trump; and, to some extent, on the definitions of the words “war” and “end”.

Several analysts said they expected fighting to continue in some form despite Trump’s warnings.

“The war in Gaza, the intensive fighting, ended months ago. What we have now is a counterinsurgency,” said Shira Efron, senior director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, an organization that seeks to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

“Israel could say: OK, we ended the war in Gaza, but we will stay here for, I don’t know, 10 years until we can hand over the war to a trusted partner,” he said. -she declared. “And that’s something Trump might agree with.”

Mark Dubowitz, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which favors a confrontational stance in dealing with Iran and its proxies, said he believed Trump understood that Israel would continue to engage militarily with its enemies. In call with Netanyahu before latest Israeli strike on Iran, Trump reportedly told the Prime Minister“Do what you have to do.”

“I don’t think the new Trump administration is under any illusion that ‘ending the war’ essentially means the end of Israeli operations in Gaza, southern Lebanon or against Iran,” Dubowitz said. “I think (Trump) is talking about major ground operations in Lebanon and major ground operations in Gaza.”

It is unclear whether Trump would consider the war over if military operations were underway in Gaza and Lebanon. As with many aspects of his agenda, the president-elect has given few details about his vision for ending the Middle East conflict.

“I would say he expects them to end it by winning 100 percent, which is how he always talks about ending wars,” said a Jewish Republican Party spokeswoman. , Elizabeth Pipko. told an Israeli television channel on Wednesday. Pressed to explain how a decisive victory could come quickly after Israeli forces waged a grueling war in Gaza for more than a year, she criticized the Biden administration for preventing “decisive” action.

It is also unclear whether the end of the war, according to Trump, would constitute an end for what remains of Hamas. The terrorist group, which nominally remains in charge of Gaza despite being beheaded and routed by Israeli forces, has so far made it unequivocally clear that it will not accept any ceasefire deal that includes the release of hostages without a complete cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of all Israeli troops.

Efron noted that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been specific in describing how they want the war to end. This solution includes the release of the hostages and an increase in humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. On the other hand, she said: “I’m not sure we know where Trump and his people are going to be,” Efron said.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street – the liberal Middle East Jewish lobby that called for a ceasefire for months supported Harris and criticized Netanyahu’s government – ​​said he could not predict whether Trump’s election would hasten the end of the war. Before the election, Ben-Ami said he believed Netanyahu was preparing to declare victory if Trump won.

“‘Who knows’ is the honest answer,” he said. “There is no coherent foreign policy. There is no coherence to anything happening around Donald Trump, and I have absolutely no idea what his policies will be in 74 days, and I imagine he has no idea either more.”

That left enough room for Middle East insiders to speculate about what Trump and Netanyahu might be thinking, and how different they might be.

“On Netanyahu’s side, I think he’s hoping to have a freer hand with Trump on Gaza in general,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that consults on both United States and the Middle East. Israeli governments. He added: “He probably thinks the Trump administration won’t subject him to the same type of scrutiny.” »

But Makovsky said that if Netanyahu thought he had completely eased pressure from the United States with Trump’s election, he could soon face a rude awakening. Trump told his audiences on the campaign trail, including Arab Americans in Michigan, that they could expect “peace in the Middle East” if he became president. Trump also faces pressure from the isolationist flank of the Republican Party – notably from Vice President-elect JD Vance – who opposes foreign interference and has warned of conflict with Iran.

“I think Trump is thinking about the breakthrough he would like in the Middle East, and that’s what the Saudis want,” he said. “But the Saudis say, ‘You can’t get a breakthrough, the Abraham Accords 2.0, if Israel is at war in Gaza.’ I don’t think Netanyahu is as sure of his relationship with Trump as some people think.”

Offir Gutelzon, an Israeli expat who lives in the Bay Area and founded a group, UnXeptable, which protests Netanyahu in solidarity with Israeli anti-government activists, said he did not think Trump would be more successful than Biden in pressure Netanyahu to end the conflict. war in Gaza.

Trump or not, Netanyahu faces pressure from his right, which is in favor of continuing the war until Hamas is crushed and who minimizes the return of the hostages.

“We are in a situation where Netanyahu has to maintain this government until the end of the budget (which must be approved before December 31), and therefore he is unable to execute anything, unfortunately, due to his needs of political survival,” Gutelzon said. said.

Gutelzon pointed to the fact that Netanyahu this week fired Yoav Gallant, the defense minister who maintained that Israel had achieved its goals in Gaza and pushed for a post-war plan, as a sign that No end to the war, nor any hostage deal, is in sight. , with or without pressure from Trump.

“Firing Gallant is not a good sign for the hostages,” said Gutelzon, whose organization works with hostage families. “I honestly don’t know what Trump can do that Biden hasn’t done – the hostage families themselves tell us that the main obstacle to the hostage deal is Netanyahu and his government. And so it depends on the Israeli government, not the American president.”

Netanyahu has clashed with Democratic presidents throughout his career, which appears to please his voter base. But Helit Barel, former director of Israel’s National Security Council, said a clash with Trump, who is popular among Israelis, would not bring the same benefits to the prime minister.

“The skirmishes with Trump are much more difficult for Netanyahu to manage than those with a Democratic administration, because at least there he scores political points at home,” she said in an interview. “But Trump also appeals to Netanyahu’s base and Israeli public opinion as a whole is really supportive of him.”

For the families of the remaining hostages – including four Americans believed to be still alive – the election is a shock in a stalemate that has failed to return their loved ones. They urged Trump to work with the Biden administration during the transition period to secure the release of the hostages.

“This is an urgent and catastrophic humanitarian crisis, not a partisan issue,” they said in a statement released Wednesday by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. “Our family members in captivity in Gaza need a bipartisan coalition of courageous and committed leaders to bring them home. »

It is unclear whether this advice will be followed. During Trump’s first transition to the White House, he and his team rejected coordination and support from the retreating Obama administration.

Ben-Ami said he saw Trump’s antagonism against the war as the only glimmer of hope after the election.

“If there is any chance that Donald Trump will be an effective messenger to convince Prime Minister Netanyahu and this radical right government that the time has come to declare victory, stop this war and bring the hostages home, it will be positive,” Ben-Ami said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that this is a total disaster for the United States and for the cause of democracy around the world.”

Efron said Trump’s record of unpredictability could prompt all sides — including Iran, which has supported Hamas and is currently threatening a third direct attack on Israel — to end the conflict.

“The good thing is that because he’s unpredictable, even though he’s been president for four years – it’s quite remarkable that he’s still so unpredictable – he creates a sort of deterrent effect. ” she said. “I’m sure the same conversations are happening right now in Ukraine and China, in Taiwan and North Korea, and in Iran and Israel: ‘What is he going to do?’ And we don’t know it. And thanks to this deterrent effect, (Trump) could have an influence on the actors.

With additional reporting by Deborah Danan.