What will Trump do now?

I still believe it is too early to judge US policies under President Donald Trump. 

For sure, Israel thought that his first day in office would be its liberation from any pressure, that he would announce immediately the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

But that did not happen. Instead, the White House announced it was only at the very first stages of even thinking about such a move. 

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a polite phone call and the president invited the Israeli premier to visit Washington in February.

But Netanyahu will not meet the president until after a string of other leaders — British Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

This underscores that Trump has bigger things to think about than Israel. 

In his inaugural speech, Trump revisited some familiar themes. He pledged to eradicate “Islamic” terror from the face of the Earth — a promise earlier presidents have made. 

But most of his speech was about putting “America first”. He set out an ambitious agenda to rebuild the country’s ageing infrastructure and bring back well paying jobs to rusted cities.

Underlying this is a feeling that the US has spent too much of its wealth in overseas adventures. There is a contradiction in Trump’s rhetoric: his vow to eradicate “terror” implies continued US meddling around the world.

There is nothing wrong with a newly elected leader putting the interests of his country as well as the welfare of his people first and ahead of every other consideration. It is the duty of every leader to do just that.

But in the case of the United States, many of its foreign adventures were motivated at least in part by the interests of a different country: Israel. This fact was meticulously diagnosed in a landmark report, later a book, of University of Chicago and Harvard professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt a decade ago.

In the final years of the Obama administration, it became clear that US and Israeli interests were not precisely aligned: while the US saw an interest in — and insisted on — better relations with Iran, Israel was determined to do all it could to sabotage a rapprochement.

With Obama gone, Netanyahu is already trying to incite Trump to tear up the historic nuclear deal with Iran and to realign the United States with Israel’s agenda.

In the coming weeks and months, Trump will hear not just from Israel, however. He will hear from voices within the US political and military establishment and from foreign allies, who will likely advise him otherwise.

Trump will then have to decide whose interests he will pursue.

As for his vow to fight “Islamic terror” — Trump himself has previously recognised that this phenomenon is intricately linked to the wars America fought overseas — including its proxy wars and interventions in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and beyond.

In his speech, Trump said the United States seeks peace with the whole world. If he is true to that, the president should recognise that the vast majority of Muslims also seek peace, for they have been the first victims of the wars and the terrorism.

The vast majority of Muslims also want to be rid of this phenomenon, which has nothing to do with their true religion, but is the symptom of so much instability and injustice. 

With time, the war on terror, ironically, turned into an indiscriminate war against Islam and the Muslim people. It is time that such a dangerous misconception is corrected. 

Blaming the entire Muslim nation for the crimes of minority radical organisations whose bloody violence targets Muslims as well plays well for Daesh and its likes. 

Only by building solid bridges with the Muslim world can President Trump isolate and defeat, with Muslim help, the radical outlaws who perpetrate their horrifying terror in the name of the noble faith of Islam.

It remains to be seen if he can refrain from making the situation worse and begin to disengage from such adventures.

When it comes to Palestine, there is a great deal of worry about what the new administration will do. Netanyahu took Trump’s mere entry into the White House as a green light to aggressively expand settlements in occupied Jerusalem.

Trump, for his part, told Netanyahu that the US believes that the only road to peace is “direct negotiations” between the parties. Well, that line is not different — so far — from Obama’s position.

Again, a big factor will be what Trump hears from others. He is surrounded by extremist pro-Israel advisers, including his ambassador-designate to Israel David Friedman and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. 

But here too, Trump will hear from other foreign leaders and may come to different conclusions.

In the worst case, if Trump decides to follow Netanyahu’s agenda in full, it will be up to the rest of the world to take action.

In other fields, there are signs of this taking place. Already, China’s President Xi Jinping has said that if the US reneges on its commitments to fight climate change, China will lead the effort.

The United States is a major power, but it has only about 5 per cent of the world’s population and 11 per cent of its economy. 

What it does matters, especially in our region. But the US does not alone determine the future and no one — especially Israel — should take for granted that it will get everything it wants.

Trump is rightly setting off quite a few alarm bells, but there’s also a good case to be made for patience to see what unfolds.