What would Trump’s Israel-Gaza policy be if he were re-elected?
At a windy rally in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, earlier this month, Donald Trump began his hour-long address by sending prayers and support to Israel as it withstood Iran’s aerial assault.
“They’re under attack right now,” the former president and presumptive Republican nominee said. “That’s because we show great weakness.”
Trump, who often describes himself as the “best friend that Israel has ever had”, blamed Tehran’s bombardment – and the entire bloody crisis – on Joe Biden, claiming it “would not have happened” if he had been president.
Yetmoments later,he appeared to agree with his supporters whenthey began chanting “Genocide Joe” – a term more commonly invoked by activists protesting against Biden’s abiding support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, whichhas killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and pushed the territory to the brink of famine.
“They’re not wrong,” the former president said, as he stepped away from the lectern and let them chant. (His campaign did not respond to a request for clarification on the remark.)
More than six months into the ruinous Middle East conflict, amid fears of a wider regional war, Trump has offered plenty of criticism – of Biden, his successor and all-but-certain rival for the White House, and of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister – but few details on what he might have done differently.
Trump’s relative silence leaves major questions about how he would act if he were to inherit the conflict in January.
His campaign did not directly respond to a list of policy questions, among them whether he supports a ceasefire, how he would handle hostage negotiations, whether there are any circumstances under which he would consider conditioning aid to Israel and whether he supports a two-state solution, an idea some of his former advisers categorically reject.
Yet in his muddled commentary, observers see the same motivations that shaped his first-term foreign policy: personal grievance and political opportunism, as discontent with Biden’s management of the conflict threatens to hurt the president’s re-election bid.
When Trump was president, he forged a close, mutually beneficial relationship with Netanyahu. But his feelings for the prime minister reportedly soured after Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his 2020 election victory, which Trump baselessly claims to have won.
Days after the deadly Hamas attack on 7 October, Trump criticized Netanyahu and Israeli intelligence for failing to anticipate and stop the invasion. He also referred to Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon that Israel has been clashing with on its northern border, as “very smart”.
The former president’s rebuke ofNetanyahu, as his country reeled from what the prime minister said was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, drew unusually sharp denunciations from fellow Republicans, including many of his challengers for the party’s presidential nomination.
Trump quickly retreated, writing on his social media platform that he stood with Netanyahu and Israel. Hours later, he posted again, declaring in a video: “I kept Israel safe, remember that. I kept Israel safe. Nobody else will, nobody else can.”
Since then, as public perceptions of the war shift amid a soaring Palestinian death toll and a deepening humanitarian crisis, Trump has surprised some