Trump Stays on Sidelines as Biden Takes Heat Over Israel-Hamas War

Trump has largely watched from the sidelines five months into a war that has cast a shadow over Biden’s re-election campaign. He has expressed general support for Israel’s military campaign against Hamas, claimed the war wouldn’t have happened on his watch and largely avoided specifics about how it should end and what should happen after.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News, Trump said Israel should wrap up the war quickly and suggested a widening rift between Democrats and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was prompted by U.S. domestic politics.

Trump made more controversial assertions about Democrats and Israel Monday.

“Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion," Trump said in an interview with his former aide Sebastian Gorka. “They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed."

Trump’s comments, which resembled previous statements he has made, were swiftly criticized for echoing an antisemitic trope that Jewish citizens have “dual loyalty" to both the U.S. and Israel.

Support for Israel was a centerpiece of Trump’s foreign policy during his time in office. But as Trump’s own relationship with Netanyahu has soured, he has delivered mixed messages since war broke out following the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas militants.

In recent months, Trump has said he would “fully support Israel defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terrorist group Hamas." He also proposed banning Palestinian refugees from the U.S. and called for cutting all funding to Palestinians. Trump has at times faulted Israeli leaders and suggested Israel is losing the battle of public opinion in the war. His claim that the Oct. 7 attacks wouldn’t have taken place if he were in the White House is an unprovable assertion that he also made about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Trump generally has been resistant to U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts, casting doubt on whether a future Trump administration would take as active a role in the Israel-Hamas war as Biden.

“You’re probably going to have to let it play out, because a lot of people are dying," Trump told Univision in a November interview.

The Trump campaign didn’t address a series of policy questions from The Wall Street Journal about the conflict. Those included whether there should be a cease-fire in Gaza, if Trump would consider restricting U.S. aid to Israel, whether he supports a two-state solution and what his plans would be for postwar Gaza.

“President Trump did more for Israel than any American President in history, and he took historic action in the Middle East that created unprecedented peace," said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who added that “all of the progress made by President Trump in the region has been unraveled by" the Biden administration. She added, “When President Trump is back in the Oval Office, Israel will once again be protected, Iran will go back to being broke, terrorists will be hunted down, and the bloodshed will end."

Some see Trump’s relative absence on the issue as a strategy to capitalize on one of Biden’s greatest perceived liabilities going into the November election. Biden has faced growing backlash from some Democratic constituencies over his support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza amid soaring civilian casualties and a deepening humanitarian crisis. Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities whose figures don’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Some U.S. voters are threatening to stay home or vote third-party in November.

“I think he’s delighted that Biden is now caught between the Republican Party, that is the ‘Israel-can-do-no-wrong party,’ and an increasingly divided Democratic Party," said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has advised both Republican and Democratic administrations on the Middle East as a State Department diplomat.

In Israel, Biden was popular at the start of the war, scoring better than Trump in a national poll of Israelis. As his administration has become more critical of Israel’s handling of the war, however, Biden is now seen by many on the Israeli right as no longer squarely in Israel’s corner.

Biden has called for a temporary cease-fire to allow for more aid into Gaza and for the release of hostages still being held by Hamas. The administration has continued to provide Israel with military aid and broadly defended its operation, but tensions between Biden and Netanyahu have escalated as their views on the war’s trajectory have diverged.

A Wall Street Journal poll this month found that 60% of voters disapproved of Biden’s handling of the war, eight points more than in December. Some 16% of Republicans said Israel has gone too far in responding to Hamas, compared with 70% of Democrats.

While in office, Trump slashed all funding to the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees, moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington. He also declared that the U.S. no longer considered Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be a violation of international law, reversing a four-decade-old policy that recently was reinstated by the Biden administration. The embassy move came after Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing nearly seven decades of U.S. foreign policy.

The Trump administration’s signature Middle East policy was the so-called Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries. The agreement, designed to further isolate Iran, was a blow to Palestinians. They had been leaning on Gulf Arab states to pressure Israel into concessions on Palestinian statehood in exchange for normalized ties and Israeli integration into the region.

Miller recounted a 2017 meeting with Jared Kushner, in which Trump’s son-in-law outlined the president’s vision for the Middle East as centered on three objectives: creating strategic partnerships with Saudi Arabia and the Emirates; making it impossible for an Israeli prime minister to say no to Trump; and treating the Palestinian issue “as if it were a sort of business transaction."

Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu, once among his closest allies, has also deteriorated since the 2020 election. Trump voiced anger in a 2021 interview that Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his victory, referring to the move as “a terrible mistake."

He also took several swipes at Netanyahu in the immediate aftermath of Oct. 7, suggesting Netanyahu had been “unprepared" while also criticizing the Israeli leader over a 2020 U.S. mission that killed Iranian military leader Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

After absorbing criticism from fellow Republicans, Trump later reversed course and declared his support for Netanyahu on his Truth Social network, posting: “#IStandWithIsrael" and “#IStandWithBibi."

Marie Harf, who served as a State Department spokeswoman in the Obama administration, said she didn’t think the breakdown between the two men would necessarily affect their relationship if Trump was back in the White House.

“I think they share a very maximalist view of the use of force, particularly against populations like the Palestinians," she said. “In this instance, I do think Trump would really unleash Bibi."

Alex Leary and Dov Lieber contributed to this article.

Write to Sabrina Siddiqui at sabrina.siddiqui@wsj.com