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What Trump Really Means When He Says He Would End the War in Gaza “Quickly”

4 7
19.03.2024
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Donald Trump on Sunday said Israel should quickly end the war in Gaza and “get back to the world of peace”—but it’s not what it sounds like.

The once and possibly future president was not urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the bombing or withdraw Israeli troops. Quite the contrary: Trump was prodding him to intensify and accelerate the military campaign, “to finish it up and do it quickly.”

He lambasted President Biden not for going easy on Israel, as leftist critics charge, but for applying pressure on Israel at all. “Biden is so bad for Israel,” Trump said. “They should’ve never been attacked. If Biden were good to Israel, they wouldn’t have been attacked.”

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Trump did not explain, nor is it remotely clear, how any American president could have prevented Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion. That failure is entirely on Netanyahu, for diverting too many troops from guarding the Gazan border to protecting settlers in the West Bank, and on Israel’s uncharacteristically lax intelligence officers for ignoring signs of an impending attack.

Trump also said, in a separate interview with Fox News on Friday, that Hamas’ invasion “would have never happened if I was president”—though,........

© Slate


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