Afrasianet - Lutfi Al, Obaidi - The logical connection that governs the relationship between public opinion and the crises of democracy is provided by the trajectories of the nature of governance in the United States of America. While America guards Israel's interests at the United Nations, supports its goal of destroying Gaza and provides its quality munitions for daily murder, it has illegally and crudely managed to launch an unprecedented Israeli military campaign that threatens all of Palestine with annihilation and displacement, and the entire region with chaos and instability.
The announcement of his position on Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza, after disappointment with Joe Biden's policies. But the fickle president was not the one who could stand up to Netanyahu given his total bias toward Israel, even after it encroached on the sovereignty of America's allies. Things seem to have deteriorated further and further, as Trump gave Israel the green light to do whatever it wanted in Gaza or elsewhere. Trump, who wants to "make America great again," seems to be based on the deliberate use of hostility, tariffs, or military force to maintain a continued potential for escalatory hegemony in the long term.
The man seems convinced that achieving control at home and abroad is the essence of politics. This can be achieved through a deliberate domination that is sold to his constituent base by saying that it is aimed at bringing peace or negotiating a ceasefire. But he failed to achieve peace, despite his search for the Nobel Peace Prize. Supporting Israel in genocide and ethnic cleansing, failing to make any serious effort to pave a political path to a settlement in Ukraine, and relying instead on war-making, while peace is declared.
All of this is at the core of Trump's approach of exercising escalatory hegemony, both internally and externally, as the head of the Conflict Resolution Forum, Alastair Crook, argues in Britain. The Doha attack was a new surprise attack in the Trump-Israel style, and the treacherous and mean-spirited style that has become a sticking feature of these people. He began with the surprise strike against Hezbollah's leadership, which was meeting to discuss a "U.S. peace initiative," the same tactic that was later replicated in the June 13 liquidation of the Iranian leadership, while Trump was promoting the start of nuclear deal talks with Witkov's team in the coming days.
Now, with Witkoff's own "Gaza Proposal" being presented as bait to bring Hamas leaders together in one place in Doha, Israel has hit the meeting ground in Qatar, which is leading a mediation effort to achieve a breakthrough in the U.S.-Israeli war of extermination on Gaza. This is how Levitkoff's Gaza proposal sounded "a farce, or a deliberate hoax," as the Financial Times described it.
Israel had already decided to end the Qatari role, and whether Trump knew in advance about Israel's strikes on Doha, and the evidence suggests that he probably knew, the result is the same: no one thinks he exerts any control over Benjamin Netanyahu, but rather he is a prisoner of Zionist wildness and the madness of the extreme right. In this respect, Trump is not much different from Joe Biden, successive American presidents have turned into "malleable mud" in the hands of the Israeli prime minister.
This was a rhetorical question for those who answered it. A remarkable increase in popular support for those who refuse to enlist in opinion polls shown by Israeli newspapers such as Haaretz. Some 33% of Israeli Jews believe that this position is not only justified, but necessary in order to save the prisoners from the dangers of the military campaign in Gaza City.
The motives for the rejection range from opposition to genocide, to moral objection to participation in war crimes, to political opposition to the occupation as a whole, to concern that military action endangers prisoners, and to objection to the exemption of the ultra-Orthodox community from service. In the face of all the protests and anger at home, Netanyahu is trying to distract Israelis from the endless series of failures he oversees by highlighting tactical displays that don't actually affect reality.
Minutes before the army announced the soldiers had been killed last week, it issued a loud statement about the downing of the Gaza towers. All this is just a prelude, while Israeli airstrikes were leveling residential buildings in Gaza City and raising the death toll. Earlier, Netanyahu also celebrated Israeli airstrikes against the Houthis, which turned out the next day to have not stopped their launching of drones and missiles at Israel. While all of this continues, there are still 48 Israeli prisoners in the hands of Hamas, a massive failure in its own right, which Netanyahu personally bears the responsibility for prolonging and refusing to dissolve.
Trump, who supports Netanyahu in the war of genocide, changes the name of the Defense Ministry to the "Ministry of War" in a move that foreshadows further strained international relations in the face of his administration's aggressive rhetoric toward Venezuela, his traditional hostility to China, and his apprehension of the Russian-Chinese alliance to rebalance the international order. But you will not be able to confront Beijing with a policy of domestic chaos and a volatile mood that accepts only obedience and glorification.
It seems clear that the only condition for running for office in the Trump administration is absolute obedience. During the first seven months of his second term, US President Donald Trump introduced unprecedented changes in the way the US government operates: he launched an unfamiliar and unexpected tariff system, canceled US foreign aid programs, disrupted US alliances, and launched a crackdown on state institutions.
He has also arrested and expelled many foreign students and researchers for their political views, forced universities, law firms, large corporations, and the media to carry out his orders, and weakened the capacity of government surveillance agencies. He also deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., allegedly fighting chaos and crime, and threatened to send the army to Chicago, New York and elsewhere.
In doing so, Trump is not seeking a governance agenda, but rather a weakening of the state, i.e., a comprehensive and deliberate destruction of the state's capabilities in the assessment of Foreign Affairs. Weakening the state is a rarity in the history of politics, as authoritarian regimes usually seek to control the state for its use, not to destroy it.
They need loyalty, they choose who is loyal, but they also need competence. Trump, on the other hand, disagrees with the usual procedures, underestimates the expertise needed to implement policies, and encourages mismanagement to override any authority other than his own. His decisions are not directed at reducing the bureaucracy or privatizing some sectors of the state, but rather he issues random orders and negotiates deals that serve his personal desires.
Washington desperately needs to rethink its relationship with military power, and in encouraging Israel's adventurism in the region and its blatant encroachment on state sovereignty, as happened with Qatar. Above all, it must stop considering military adventurism as the best solution to all potential threats against it, or against its terrorist entity in the region. Trump has made chaos a feature of the new order, and worst-case scenarios seem to be becoming more realistic than ever.