Israeli officials were some of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Donald J. Trump on his election victory on Wednesday, with some hailing it as a win for their country. The sentiment reflects Mr. Trump’s record of strong support for Israel, even when that meant reversing decades of American policy in the Middle East.
Here’s a look at Mr. Trump’s policies on Israel during his first term as president.
The Abraham Accords
Under the first Trump administration, the number of Arab states that had diplomatic relations with Israel went from two to six. New agreements with Morocco, Sudan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates expanded a list that for decades had only been comprised of Egypt and Jordan.
The most prominent of those agreements was the Abraham Accords in 2020, which brought Bahrain and the U.A.E. into the fold — both Persian Gulf monarchies eager to shore up alliances with the West against their neighbor and longtime rival to the north, Iran.
Separate agreements with Morocco and Sudan were made weeks after the Abraham Accords were struck.
Jerusalem
Soon after he took office, Mr. Trump reversed decades of careful diplomacy when in 2017 he recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital of Israel and said the United States would move its embassy to the city. The embassy was relocated from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem the following year.
Israel declared West Jerusalem its capital in 1949, when the city was divided and East Jerusalem and its Arab residents were ruled by neighboring Jordan. But the position of the U.S. and most other countries had been that the city’s status should be determined through negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, who have long wanted East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The issue of whether to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital grew more complex when Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and subsequently annexed it. The annexation was not widely recognized by the international community.
Congress passed a law requiring the U.S. embassy to move to Jerusalem in 1995, but successive presidential administrations deferred implementing the law out of concerns it could increase instability in the Middle East.
The Golan Heights
The United States, under the first Trump administration, became the first country in the world to recognize Israel’s authority over the long-disputed Golan Heights.
In 2019, Mr. Trump signed a presidential proclamation declaring the territory part of Israel. That move was also a reversal of longstanding U.S. policy on the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war and subsequently annexed.
The annexation of the Golan Heights has never been recognized by the United Nations, which condemned it at the time. Mr. Trump’s decision was criticized internationally and carried primarily symbolic weight.
The population of the Golan Heights is roughly evenly divided between Israelis and Arabs who lived there before 1967.
In honor of Mr. Trump’s decision, the Israeli government planned a new settlement in the Golan that now bears his name: Trump Heights.
UNRWA
The Trump administration cut off all American funding to the United Nations agency that provides assistance to millions of Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in 2018.
The year before, the U.S. had contributed about $360 million to the agency, which provides health care, education and other humanitarian services to stateless Palestinians.
The decision was widely denounced by world leaders. It was described at the time as political tactic to pressure Palestinian leaders to give up the right of Palestinian refugees under international law to return to property taken from their ancestors during the creation of Israel in 1948.
UNRWA has been in focus in recent months since the war in Gaza began. Israeli officials claimed that a small number of UNRWA employees were connected to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year — an assertion that prompted several countries to suspend funding and for which Israel failed to provide evidence. Last week, the Knesset passed a law banning the agency from operating in Israel.
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