Will a New Trump Team Force a Recalibration in the Middle East?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

69% : On Friday, Trump spoke to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas for the first time since the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017.
53% : Trump emphasized his commitment to ending the war in Gaza during the conversation, according to a PA read-out.
46% : Trump announced Tuesday his intent to nominate former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Israel.
45% : Trump has reportedly appointed Brian Hook, who helped shape the Iran policy of the president-elect's first term, to head the State Department's transition team.
42% : "Not only because of Trump's election, but also because of the people that Trump has appointed.
29% : " Trump has publicly and privately called on Israel to wrap up its war effort, including by telling Netanyahu to "finish up and get it done quickly."
29% : " Assaf Orion, a retired Israeli brigadier general who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, agreed: "Trump has said, 'I won't be starting wars, I'll be ending them.'
25% : Hook -- who, like Trump and Netanyahu, has been targeted for assassination by the Iranian regime -- is likely to pursue a hard-line policy toward Iran.
24% : "Even in the transition [Trump will] apply pressure to end the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, because he doesn't want to inherit the problem.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.