Former President Donald Trump has revealed how Israel’s fate with the U.S. would play out if he were to be elected back to the White House next year, vowing to “undo the terrible damage” that the Biden administration and to implement a series of foreign and domestic policy to counter the actions of the current president.
In an op-ed published by Newsweek on October 17, Trump outlined his plan to reinstate and expand his Muslim travel ban, to prohibit anyone supporting Hamas from immigrating to the U.S., to give the nation its own Iron Dome defense system and to “begin the largest deportation operation in American history,” among other actions.
“When I return to the White House, I will once again stand with Israel 100 percent,” the former president wrote. “The United States will fully support Israel in defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terror group Hamas.”
On October 7, Hamas led the deadliest Palestinian militant attack on Israel in history. Israel subsequently launched its heaviest-ever airstrikes on Gaza and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared war, cutting food, fuel, electricity and medicine off from Gaza. Israel has also called up 360,000 army reservists as it prepares for a likely ground offensive into the territory, which has an estimated population of around 2.3 million.
Scott Eisen/Getty Images
As of Tuesday, at least 4,000 people had been killed in both Israel and Gaza, the Associated Press said. An Israeli airstrike that hit a Gaza City hospital on Tuesday killed at least another 500 people. It marked the deadliest Israeli attack in the five wars fought between the two since 2008.
In the first days of the Israel-Hamas war, Trump had made a series of controversial remarks that criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and complimented Iran-backed Hezbollah, statements that drew a line of attacks from his GOP primary rivals. The former president has since walked back on those comments, reaffirming his support for Israel and highlighting his White House record.
Trump echoed those sentiments in Thursday’s op-ed, describing himself as the “best friend Israel ever had in the White House” and emphasizing his role in negotiating the Abraham Accords between Israel and various Arab countries, while blasting President Joe Biden’s handling of Israel.
“When I left office, Iran was weak, broke, and desperate to make a deal,” he said.
“But then Biden came in, loosened my sanctions, and today Iran is producing more than three million barrels [of oil] a day,” Trump added.
In response to the Israel-Hamas war, the former president said he would reinstate his first-term travel ban on Muslim-majority countries Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and go on to extend that to ban Palestinian refugees who want to flee to the U.S. from Gaza. He said he’d also put in stronger immigration screening that would immediately disqualify anyone who wanted to abolish Israel, anyone who empathized with Islamic extremists or anyone who was a “Communist, Marxist, or Fascist.”
His push for immigration reform would include aggressive deportations of anyone with “jihadist sympathies,” which would include the revocation of student visas from any student who exhibited anti-American or antisemitic views and the deployment of ICE on demonstrators who espoused “pro-jihadist” views.
“This is how I will begin to undo the terrible damage Joe Biden has done and end the Biden betrayal of Israel. In the meantime, the entire world must stand with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s war-time government as they seek to defeat these murderous enemies,” Trump said.