In ‘Trump Heights’, Israelis have not abandoned US president despite Iran deal

TRUMP HEIGHTS – As the sound of Israeli artillery shells echoed around their hilltop homes close to Lebanon, residents of Trump Heights struggled to hide their dismay at the deal to end the war with Iran, but were not giving up on their hero in the White House.

Under the US-Iran agreement announced earlier this week to end the Middle East war, fighting is also supposed to cease between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

In Israel, the agreement is widely viewed as undermining the country’s security and its acceptance by Washington as a strategic failure for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In Trump Heights, a community of small prefabricated homes perched on a hilltop just 15km from the Lebanon border, the deal with Iran has not proved popular with residents.

But for those living in the settlement, named in homage to the US president, the agreement was not cause to completely abandon their community’s namesake.

“We give President Trump the benefit of the doubt that he is making the right decisions for America, and that he is also trying to help his allies – and, of course, the most important ally in the region is Israel,” said 32-year-old Shlomo Schlechter.

But “we understand that American and Israeli interests do not always go hand in hand”, the law student said, adding that he still trusted the US president to make the right decision as the deal’s details are hashed out over the next 60 days.

Like other residents AFP spoke to, Schlechter said he did not expect the deal to hold, nor Israel to withdraw from Lebanon.

“We hope that President Trump will remain firm, and when he sees that the Iranians are not serious – as I expect will happen – he will return and know how to deal with them with a heavy hand, as he knows how to do,” he told AFP.

From Trump Heights, Israeli artillery could be heard pounding its northern neighbour on the morning of June 19, after four Israeli soldiers were killed the previous night.

By late afternoon, a US official said Israel and Hezbollah had agreed a ceasefire that began at 4pm local time (9pm Singapore time), brokered by US and Qatari mediators following talks with Israel and Iran.

“When someone does something good for you, you’re not gonna hate them right when they do something you agree a little less with,” Dalia Ben Shabbat, a 38-year-old resident of Trump Heights, told AFP.

“Regarding President Trump himself, we’re very thankful for what he’s done for Israel until now,” the architecture student and mother-of-four said.

Hours before the US-Iran deal was announced earlier this week, Trump excoriated Netanyahu for launching attacks in Lebanon that threatened to derail it.

“He’s a very difficult guy,” Trump said of Netanyahu, “and to be honest with you, he should be very thankful to us for doing this. Because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be around for two hours.”

On June 18, US Vice President JD Vance also issued an extraordinary rebuke to Israeli critics of the Iran deal, warning them not to alienate their “only powerful ally” left in the world.

“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time, and he happens to be the head of state of the world superpower,” Vance said.

But in Trump Heights, emblazoned with Israeli and US flags, residents did not take the comments by the US executive to heart.

“If the person is good, the person is good,” Ben Shabbat said of the US president.

Trump Heights, which sits in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, is an homage to Donald Trump who in 2019 recognised Israel’s sovereignty over the strategic plateau, making the US the first, and so far only, country to do so.

While the community did not seem to have fully abandoned the US president, some residents voiced strong disappointment about his deal with Iran.

“This deal is the equivalent of Vichy France making a deal with Nazi Germany,” one middle-aged man in a wheelchair who declined to be named said, referring to France’s World War II government which collaborated with the Nazis to send Jews to concentration camps.

A teenager who said he had been out of school for the last two months because of the war with Iran said he felt the deal did not take into account Israelis living near Lebanon.

“If there is a ceasefire with Iran, people in central and south Israel will stop receiving Iranian missiles, but here in the north we will still have Hezbollah rockets,” he said. AFP