Trump has abandoned the idea of diplomacy in the Middle East | Jo-Ann Mort

When I wrote an opinion piece for the Guardian a few months ago, anticipating Donald Trump’s foreign policy regarding the Middle East, I made a big mistake.

I thought that there would be diplomacy involved, even if it was ill-conceived. Instead, the complete lack of diplomatic rendering in this administration’s foreign policy is already pointing in dangerous directions, especially regarding Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan and Egypt. Saudi Arabia, the sleeping giant that’s in a key position to provide a roadmap to a fair resolution for both Israelis and Palestinians, seems to be sitting on the sidelines now.

The fact that the Trump team has proposed no realistic diplomatic settlement (alas, condos in Gaza along with depopulation hardly counts) means that there is a void being filled by Benjamin Netanyahu. While there was frustration among some progressives regarding Joe Biden’s diplomatic efforts, the reality is that he and his experienced team were trying to create change on the ground that could benefit both Israelis and Palestinians and, at the same time, fulfill what had been a decades-long professed American interest in two states and against terrorist groups.

To abandon an idea of diplomacy, as this administration has done, will lead to more deaths and destruction. The Middle East – and especially civil society inside Israel, the Palestinians, Egyptians and Jordanians – has also been a huge recipient of US soft aid. This aid, now completely disappeared overnight, helped to promote partnerships among people, frayed though they were in the last years. USAID’s dissolution cancelled decades of American financial support to create more equality between Jewish and Arab citizens inside Israel, to support Palestinian women and grassroots efforts within the occupied Palestinian territories, to enhance democracy-building apparatuses within the occupied Palestinian territories and inside of Israel itself, and so much more.

Meanwhile, unschooled in history or diplomacy, this administration is now quickly emptying out its experienced foreign service officers and diplomats. The career diplomat Hans Wechsel, the head of the state department’s office of Palestinian affairs in Jerusalem, announced his early retirement because he reportedly “didn’t like the direction the ship was heading”.

This loss of career diplomats leaves an open road for an energetic ideologue like the incoming US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, a fanatical believer in the right of Israeli Jewish settlers (and an Israeli government that supports the settlers) to take over the West Bank, because God gave the land to the Jewish people – notwithstanding the millions of Palestinians who live there.

As frustrated as American progressives were about the Biden strategy for Israel-Palestine, it can’t be overstated how much the professionalism of the state department and the embassies in the region aimed to temper rightwing fundamentalism on all sides, aided progressive civil society organizations and simply saved lives. This is all gone now.

As I write this, Trump is threatening Iran with bombs and his new favorite toy, tariffs.

It’s critical to understand that threatening Iran (which also provides financial and military support to Hamas and other Islamic actors in the region) could have overwhelming consequences for the safety of Israelis and Palestinians alike.

To discount a real diplomatic track is foolishness gone wild when considering how to deal with, and respond to, Iran. It was only a few months ago, after all, that Israelis witnessed massive air attacks from Iran that also threatened Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the entire West Bank. What stopped the missiles? Extraordinary diplomatic efforts from countries, named and unnamed, from Europe and the Middle East, assembled and coordinated by the Biden administration.

Instead, the only US diplomacy under way right now appears to be by the president’s golfing buddy, Steven Witkoff, who has no foreign policy experience. Case in point: Witkoff was included on the now infamous Signal chain – led by the national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and including the Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg – while in Moscow, where Iranian intelligence officers abound, not to mention the Russians themselves (although the White House says Witkoff did not actually use Signal during the trip). According to Politico, it was one of many Signal chats led by the national security team for discussing global crises.

‘Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority offices are located, feels like an isolated city-state.’ Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Witkoff’s extraordinarily ill-advised interview with Tucker Carlson a week ago included all sorts of nuggets that have further complicated any efforts in the region to either halt the Gaza war or save the remaining live Israeli hostages. In at least one case, he recited incorrect information about the domestic Egyptian economy, and according to Zvi Bar’el, a reporter for Haaretz, his off-the-cuff remarks infuriated the Egyptian leadership. (They are already unhappy because they proposed a diplomatic plan to end the war between Hamas and Israel that was ignored by both the US and Israel.)

Witkoff has earned the support of some of the Israeli hostage families since his personal outreach to them touched families whose own government scorns them. But in his statements this week, Witkoff offered Israelis only endless war by allowing the Israeli prime minister to continue down that path.

The Israeli people are exhausted. More reservists are not showing up for duty to fight the renewed war in Gaza, despite the tacit agreement between the society and the state that calls on soldiers to serve when they receive a notice of call for duty. This shortfall can be attributed to the significant numbers of Israelis who see the renewed Israeli offensive as nothing but a ploy by Bibi, enmeshed in a serious legal battle to stay out of prison for corruption charges. A poll this week by Channel 12, one of Israel’s top TV news outlets, shows that 70% of Israelis don’t trust Netanyahu and 69% want a ceasefire, fearing that renewed war will further harm the hostages. Yet these numbers and sentiments are being ignored by a US administration that appears increasingly to rely on Netanyahu and his small set of very loyal rightwing advisers who share one overriding goal: to stay in power.

I was recently in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority offices are located, feels like an isolated city-state, filled with politicians unable to govern, partly due to their being ignored by the Israeli government and the US government, and workers unable to get paid, due to massive financial shortfalls.

After riding in a taxi through the Qalandia refugee camp, I crossed the Qalandia checkpoint on foot. On a public bus back to my hotel in East Jerusalem, I meandered through Palestinian villages and neighborhoods under Israeli occupation. Aside from the Palestinian friend by my side, I was the only adult on the bus, which was filled with schoolchildren on their way home from school, playing games on their mobile phones and eating snacks stuffed into their backpacks. One young girl sat across from me, her eyes expanding and a shy smile on her face, as she heard us talking in English. Without words she leaned over and offered me some of her after-school treat that her mother no doubt had packed for her. She was clearly enchanted by my American demeanor. If only my country had something like hope to offer back to her.

• Jo-Ann Mort is co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel? She writes frequently about Israel for US, UK and Israeli publications