The war between Israel and Hamas has put Israel and the Palestinians back in the forefront of American politics and abruptly injected some long-standing divisive issues into the 2024 presidential race.
Both President Biden and former President Trump express basic support for Israel, but differ significantly on a two-state solution, settlements, and other key issues.
Here is a comparison of their positions and backgrounds:
Israel
Overall, Biden has continued what for decades had been a bipartisan approach toward Israel: strong support but always with varying degrees of inclusion and assistance to the Palestinians. Biden has used American power at times to try to influence Israeli behavior, such as in his conduct of the current war or his resistance to controversial changes to Israel's judiciary, which many considered undemocratic.
He has not gone as far as President Obama, for example, who insisted that Israel freeze settlement construction in areas claimed by the Palestinians.
But when push comes to shove, Biden has sided with Israel, refusing to significantly curb military aid and vetoing United Nations measures that Israel opposes, including a recent one to formally recognize a Palestinian state.
President Joe Biden and former President Trump
Still, Biden – like most previous American leaders – has tried to maintain some balance and support for the Palestinians and present the United States as a potential mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
By contrast, Trump was the first American chief executive to provide almost absolute and unconditional support for Israel, giving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government everything it asked for and then some.
Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the disputed capital of Jerusalem, the first major country to do so. He backed Israeli control of the Golan Heights, a disputed fertile plateau that Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. He did so without concessions from Israel.
A UN peacekeeper stops a car at a checkpoint on a road leading to the outskirts of the small village of Ghajar, Lebanon, which has been a point of contention between Israel and Lebanon for years.
(Hassan Ammar / Associated Press)
Trump was so popular among right-wing Israelis that Netanyahu used him in his re-election campaign, adorning cities across Israel with huge posters of the two men together. A Jewish settlement in the West Bank is named after Trump.
Trump's unilateral approach earned him praise from some pro-Israel advocates, but critics say he also sacrificed valuable U.S. influence in negotiating broader peace in the region.
War between Israel and Hamas
Biden expressed US support for Israel and its right to self-defense after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that left nearly 1,200 Israelis and others dead.
“The United States stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist attacks. [U.S. support] “He is rock solid and unbreakable,” Biden said from the White House, a few hours after the attacks and before traveling to Tel Aviv to support Netanyahu. “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, period.”
Biden, however, has advised the Israeli government to show more restraint in its attacks against Palestinians in Gaza to minimize civilian casualties and curb vigilante violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Amid growing international condemnation of an Israeli military response that has left more than 36,000 Palestinians dead, critics say the Biden administration has not done enough to rein in Israel. Recently, the president increased pressure for an immediate ceasefire and unveiled a plan that would free the hostages and definitively end the war.
By contrast, Trump has expressed no concern for Palestinian victims. He has urged Israel to “do the work” to destroy Hamas. “You have to end your war,” Trump told the right-wing Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom in late March. “You have to do it”.
Trump accused Biden of “abandoning” Israel when the administration briefly suspended shipping 2,000-pound bombs to Israel as Israel threatened to move into the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Trump criticized Israel for “losing the public relations battle” by allowing images of the war in Gaza to spread. He did not explain how Israel could prevent it.
Palestinian state
Biden supports an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, an idea that remains dominant in the international community's position towards the region.
“As we look to the future, the only real solution to the situation is a two-state solution over time,” Biden said in his State of the Union address this year. “There is no other path that guarantees Israel's security and democracy. There is no other way to guarantee… that Palestinians can live in peace [with] dignity.”
Trump has been dismissive of the aspiration for a Palestinian state, although at times he has not ruled it out entirely. He closed the de facto Palestinian embassy in Washington and generally refused to meet with Palestinian leaders as president.
An overflow of worshipers pray in front of the entrance to the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City in March.
(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
Most importantly, Trump's decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem reversed decades of US and international policy that held that the final designation of Israel's capital would be determined in a final peace agreement. The Palestinians also claim parts of Jerusalem as their capital.
Biden has not reversed Trump's move, abandoning the embassy in Jerusalem, nor has he fulfilled his promise to reopen the US consulate in East Jerusalem, which had historically served the Palestinians and was closed by Trump.
The future of Gaza?
President Biden has insisted that any future agreement for the Gaza Strip will leave it intact and in Palestinian hands.
Trump has not spoken one way or the other. But he had previously been receptive to plans put forward by Israel to annex Gaza and even the West Bank.
Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was the then-president's point man for the Middle East, expressed some thoughts. He told an interviewer that he believed the best option in the conflict was to “tear down something in the Negev,” the desert in southern Israel that borders Egypt, and move Palestinians there so Israeli forces could “finish the work” in Gaza. Kushner made the comments to the Middle East Initiative, a program at Harvard University.
Palestinians flee the southern Gaza city of Rafah during an Israeli ground and air offensive in May.
(Jehad Alshrafi / Associated Press)
Kushner added that Gaza's “waterfront property” could be “very valuable” and said allowing Palestinians to have a state was a “super bad idea.” It is unclear what role she would have in a possible future Trump administration or whether his views reflect those of his father-in-law.
Settlements
The Biden administration has revived the long-standing US policy that the Jewish settlements Israel erects in the West Bank are an impediment to peace. Most of the world goes a step further and says they are illegal. Still, Israel continues to build them, despite protests from the State Department.
In December, the administration took the unusual step of sanctioning a small number of Israeli settlers deemed responsible for deadly attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. The settlers seized Palestinian land, destroyed their olive orchards and burned their houses.
Trump took no action as president to stop the settlements and his administration took steps to legitimize them.
Trump's Secretary of State, Michael R. Pompeo, said in 2019 that, contrary to decades of American policy, Jewish settlements built in the West Bank and other territories claimed by the Palestinians “were not incompatible with international law.”
Avigail, an Israeli settlement seen from Shaeb al-Botum, occupied West Bank.
(Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times)
Until then, the Democratic and Republican administrations had considered the settlements, at a minimum, “useless” for a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in some cases, illegal.
On this issue, the Biden administration reversed Trump's policy, returning to the traditional (if vague) American description of settlements as problematic and useless, while refusing to call them explicitly illegal.
Approach to Arab nations
Biden has formed an alliance with several Arab countries to confront the Gaza war and negotiate with Hamas.
It also seeks to build on Trump's efforts to establish a coalition of Arab states that recognize Israel as a way to promote better regional integration.
But Biden is resisting some of the demands that countries have to recognize Israel. The biggest prize is regional superpower Saudi Arabia, which is conditioning its agreement on aid with a nuclear energy program and the establishment of a NATO-like mutual defense security pact.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and then-President Trump meet in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
(Evan Vucci / Associated Press)
From his first days in office, Trump aggressively courted Saudi Arabia's wealthy leaders, making a trip to the desert kingdom the first of his administration. (Usually presidents make the first trip to an established ally.)
To foster closer ties with Saudi Arabia, Trump showed a willingness to overlook Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's human rights record, including the 2018 government-ordered killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Trump's greatest achievement was the so-called Abraham Accords, in which two Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, first recognized Israel and opened diplomatic relations.
It was a development seen as the beginning of a possible new regional diplomatic order. Saudi Arabia did not join the détente, but clearly supported it, allowing the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to act. That left Riyadh as the dangling carrot that the Biden administration is now pursuing and that Trump, if elected, would like to make a priority.
