The neck-and-neck race for the White House is tightening between Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris and Republican Party candidate Donald Trump in the US, with Harris widening her electoral base and bringing on board potential Democratic voters who had been averse to voting for sitting President Joe Biden when he was the party’s presidential candidate.

A survey published by the New York Times and Siena College this week showed Harris currently leading Trump by four percentage points among likely voters in the three critical swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

A new base of Democratic voters is pitching in for Harris on the strength of her liberal policies on abortion, certain freedoms, and gender rights and because they are hopeful that she will manage the economy competently while in her words “supporting the middle class.”

But it is the policy that she will adopt regarding the current Israeli war on Gaza that remains contentious for many, despite her having come out with bold statements on the need for a ceasefire and an end to the humanitarian suffering endured by the Palestinians in Gaza.

Last week, Harris held a rally in Michigan, which has a sizeable Arab-American community and in which more than 100,000 people had previously cast an “uncommitted” vote in the state’s primary elections in protest at the Biden administration and the Democratic Party’s existing policies on Gaza.

Prior to the rally in Detroit, Harris met privately with leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement, who called for an arms embargo on Israel. Layla Elabed, a co-chair of the movement, told the news channel Democracy Now that Harris had expressed deep personal sympathy for the humanitarian suffering of the Palestinians.

However, following the rally Harris’ National Security Adviser Philip Gordon wrote on X that Harris “has been clear: she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups. She does not support an arms embargo on Israel. She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”

A Harris administration is thus expected to continue the Democratic Party’s policy of strongly supporting and defending Israel.

But while there will be no arms embargo, a degree of moderation in channeling US military support could be exercised, as happened under the Biden administration. This will depend on how Harris negotiates ties with Israel, the regional situation, and whether the Democratic Party can maintain its current narrow 51-49 majority in the US Senate, if she is elected in November.

By contrast, Donald Trump’s Mideast policy has not been formulated in definite terms during the electoral campaign. Some clues can be gleaned from his past record as US president from 2017 to 2021, however.

During his first term in office, Trump fulfilled many of the conservative policies advocated by the Republican Party, but under his own specific brand of MAGA (Make America Great Again).

Trump, among other unilateral economic measures that included replacing NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, also took a hardline stance on trade with China. His statements during the current presidential campaign reveal that he intends to continue doing so.

Trump has not been soft on Iran, at least when it comes to the rhetoric during his current presidential campaign. There was also the revelation this week (whose source was Microsoft) that Iranian agents had hacked his electoral campaign.

If elected for a second term, Trump will have to negotiate his Middle East policy within the context of a situation that has become more complicated than that during his first term.

A couple of weeks following the Hamas attack on Israel last 7 October and while he was still the candidate for the Republican Party, Trump asserted at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual leadership summit that he “loves Israel” and that he was proud to be the “best friend that it ever had.”

While on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania in April and following the attack on Israeli territory by Iranian projectiles, he asserted that such an attack “would not have happened” had he been president.

Apart from his strong verbal support for Israel, Trump has not been specific as to what his strategy on Gaza will be. During one of his campaign rallies, he intimated that anger at the humanitarian toll among the Palestinians in Gaza is justified.

With the Middle East region on the brink of an all-out confrontation between Israel with the US at its back, on the one hand, and Iran and its Axis of Resistance, on the other, a second Trump administration will inevitably face a double challenge.

It will have to contend with overcoming the current escalation of the war in Gaza, which is fuelling the current regional confrontation. It will also need not only to work towards reaching a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but also attaining a political settlement between the Palestinians and Israel.

Only such a settlement will allow Trump to push further with what he considers to have been his major achievement to date in the Middle East, the so-called “Abraham Accords.”

Saudi Arabia, with which Trump is interested in forging greater economic and commercial ties, continues to refuse to sign up to any peace agreement with Israel as long as it continues its onslaught on Gaza with no political resolution in sight.

A second Trump administration that is escalating tensions with Iran will also put a spoke in the wheel of the entente that both Saudi Arabia and Iran have been seeking as part of a mutual bid to forge bilateral ties and avert further escalation in the region.

It is not known how Trump, neither an establishment figure, nor an ideologue, but more of a pragmatic businessman who formulates his policies in an ad hoc manner, will deal with this development.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 15 August, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly