Incoming US president Donald Trump pulled off a surprising feat late in the campaign, making gains with Muslim voters with a characteristically bold promise to end bloodshed in the Middle East.

Now, his new supporters are celebrating his victory and confident he will deliver despite Israel, led by his close ally Benjamin Netanyahu, continuing its 13-month siege of Gaza and bombardment of neighboring Lebanon.

Israelis in Jerusalem welcomed Donald Trump's US election triumph on Wednesday, hoping he might help end the wars devastating the region, while some called it "part of God's plan".

"I believe in God, so this is part of God's plan," Esther Henderson, 44, a shopper in the ancient city's popular Mahane Yehuda market, told AFP.

"I feel like this is part of God showing us that the evil side, the more corrupt, the globalism, is starting to fall down," she said.

"It's not that I love Trump so much," said Henderson. "I just don't like what's been going on in the world lately."

When Donald Trump was last in the White House, he pursued a policy of "maximum pressure" against the Islamic republic of Iran, including punishing sanctions.

Now that he is set to begin another term as US president in January, anxiety is mounting in Tehran that more of the same will follow.

During Trump's first term, the United States also killed a revered Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general in an air strike on Baghdad airport in Iraq.

Such history between the two long-time adversaries casts a dark shadow over the prospect of relations improving.

Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday want Donald Trump, who won the US election, to end the war between Israel and Hamas that has devastated their territory.

The conflict sparked by Hamas's October 7 attack has taken an appalling human toll in the Gaza Strip, displacing most of its residents, causing widespread hunger and death, and leaving hospitals struggling to cope.

"We were displaced, killed... there's nothing left for us, we want peace," Mamdouh al-Jadba, who was displaced to Gaza City from Jabalia, told AFP.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the "Iranian threat" in a call with US president-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday as the wars in Gaza and Lebanon show no sign of easing.

Saudi state media also reported that the Gulf heavyweight's de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, spoke to Trump to congratulate him.

A trip to Riyadh was Trump's first foreign visit after he took office in 2017.

Lebanon said Wednesday that it had filed a complaint with the United Nations' labour agency over deadly attacks on communication devices across the country in September, which it blames on Israel.

Lebanese Labour Minister Mustafa Bayram called the attack an "egregious war against humanity, against technology, against work", saying his country had filed the complaint with the International Labour Organization in Geneva.

"It's a very dangerous precedent," he told journalists in the Swiss city at an event organised by the UN correspondents' association ACANU.

A referendum in Qatar to scrap short-lived legislative polls has passed with more than 90 percent of the vote, officials said on Wednesday, ending a flirtation with democracy in the Gulf monarchy.

The vote approved a raft of constitutional amendments with 90.6 percent of valid ballots cast by Qatari citizens, the interior ministry said.

"By participating in the referendum and by voting in favour of the constitutional amendments, Qataris have celebrated... the values of unity and justice," Qatar's emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, posted on X.

The family of Iran-born German citizen Jamshid Sharmahd does not trust anything said by the Iranian government about his fate, his daughter said Tuesday, after the judiciary announced he had died before his death sentence could be implemented.

"We do not trust anything. We have to get proof from an independent investigation that is carried out outside of Iran," Gazelle Sharmahd told AFP.

An Iranian judiciary spokesman said earlier that Sharmahd had died in prison, after a previous announcement last week said he had been executed.

Israel's new Defence Minister Israel Katz, known for his abrasive style, is a long-time ally and loyalist of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a dramatic announcement late on Tuesday, Netanyahu sacked defence minister Yoav Gallant over what he said was a breakdown in trust during the Gaza war against Hamas.

"Over the past few months that trust has eroded. In light of this, I decided today to end the term of the defence minister," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office.

Haunted by the daily violence ravaging the Middle East, Soujoud Hamade, a registered Democrat, felt compelled to back Green Party candidate Jill Stein in the US presidential election.

"It is very emotional," the 32-year-old real estate lawyer told AFP after casting her ballot Tuesday at a school in Dearborn, the nation's largest Arab-majority city, where voters could prove decisive in the key battleground of Michigan.