Israeli soldiers gather in a staging area near the border with Gaza Strip, in southern Israel Tuesday.
Ariel Schalit/AP
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Israeli soldiers gather in a staging area near the border with Gaza Strip, in southern Israel Tuesday.
Ariel Schalit/AP
It’s the day of President Biden’s trip to Israel — his strongest show of support for the country yet in its war against Hamas.
“We’ll make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of itself,” Biden said last week.
The trip, which comes as Israel prepares for a ground counterattack in Gaza, will give Biden the chance to meet with Israeli leaders and discuss growing humanitarian concerns in Gaza.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, more than 1,400 Israelis and at least 3,000 Palestinians have died because of the conflict. Officials in Gaza say nearly two-thirds of Palestinians killed are children, and that the toll on the Palestinian side is likely to increase after an explosion hit a hospital in Gaza Tuesday.
Republicans seeking Biden’s office are closely watching his steps, as his approach to the war gives them a chance to contrast with the president, who’s running for re-election, on an issue that is key to GOP foreign policy.
While people in both political parties have decried the attacks as horrific, the war has revealed a deep split among Republican presidential hopefuls in particular as they disagree over whether the U.S. should practice isolationism in its foreign affairs, or take on a more interventionist approach.
Here’s where the candidates stand:
Donald Trump
In a recent speech to his supporters, the former president criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for not being “prepared” for the attack. He then separately complimented Hezbollah, the anti-Israel militant and political organization that operates to Israel’s north in Lebanon, calling it “very smart” for its intelligence capabilities.
Several in his party have criticized him over those comments: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called his statements “absurd,” and his former second in command, former Vice President Mike Pence, described them as “reckless and irresponsible.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and then-President Donald Trump stand to depart the Abraham Accords signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Sept. 2020.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and then-President Donald Trump stand to depart the Abraham Accords signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Sept. 2020.
Alex Brandon/AP
But in later remarks, Trump clarified that he stands with Israel. He also said he favors continuing a freeze on refugees from entering the U.S., which would include those coming from Gaza. Trump bristled at the idea of admitting Palestinian refugees and said he’d also ban those who support Hamas, or are a “communist, Marxist or fascist,” from entering.
“If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified,” he said.
Ron DeSantis
DeSantis, a distant runner-up to Trump in national polling, said Israel should use “overwhelming force” so that “Hamas terrorist infrastructure and networks are eradicated from the Earth.”
But as for U.S. involvement, DeSantis said he only favors supplementary aid for Israel, and opposes deploying troops to the Middle East.
DeSantis argued that the U.S. should not accept Palestinians fleeing the region as refugees.
“If you look at how they behave — not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic, ” he said. “None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist. None of the Arab states are willing to take any of them,” he told voters in Iowa.
While speaking with one voter in New Hampshire about the conflict, DeSantis said, “Why aren’t these Arab countries willing to absorb some of the Palestinian Arabs?”
After the voter, who said he is Arab American, exchanged more conversation with DeSantis, he told the candidate, “You had my vote, but you don’t now.”
Nikki Haley
Haley made it her mission while she was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations to staunchly defend Israel. She said the U.S. must stand with Israel as they “finish” Hamas.
She’s also criticized DeSantis for claiming that all Palestinians are antisemitic.
“There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule,” she said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“They want to be free from all of that,” she said. “And America has always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists.”
Some joked that Haley was a second ambassador for Israel during her tenure at the U.N. She stopped the appointment of a Palestinian envoy, and claimed that she helped cut out language from a U.S. report that said Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is “apartheid.” When Israeli forces killed more than 50 Palestinians in 2018, Haley defended the country and even walked out of a Security Council meeting when a permanent observer of the Palestinian territories to the U.N. began speaking about those killings in Gaza.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley walks out as Riyad Mansour (bottom center), the permanent observer of Palestine to the U.N., addresses a Security Council meeting on Tuesday concerning the violence along the Gaza border.
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U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley walks out as Riyad Mansour (bottom center), the permanent observer of Palestine to the U.N., addresses a Security Council meeting on Tuesday concerning the violence along the Gaza border.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
In August, she fought back against competitor Vivek Ramaswamy when he suggested the U.S. gradually reduce its military aid to Israel. Since 2009, the U.S. has given Israel $3.4 billion in missile defense funding, which includes $1.3 billion just for the Iron Dome, its air-defense system, since 2011.
One of the last steps she took as ambassador before she stepped down in 2018 was to prompt a U.N. vote that, if passed, would have condemned actions by Hamas, though that vote failed.
Mike Pence
In an interview with Fox News, the former vice pres