Donald Trump has doubled down on his backing for Israel after having appeared to give a green light to the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, to recognize a Palestinian state.
Amid signs of mounting opposition among his Maga base to Israel’s military operation in Gaza, Trump criticized Starmer’s plan to grant recognition as “rewarding Hamas” even after having not taken issue with it when the pair met in Scotland this week.
Talking to journalists onboard Air Force One on his return to Washington, Trump said the US was “not in that camp”, referring to Starmer’s pledge, which followed a similar declaration by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, days earlier that France would formally recognize Palestinian statehood.
“We never did discuss it,” Trump said, in reference to Starmer’s announcement. He added: “You’re rewarding Hamas if you do that. I don’t think they should be rewarded.”
His comments were in line with the US state department, whose spokesperson, Tammy Bruce, called the recognition decision “a slap in the face” to victims of Hamas’s deadly 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the current war.
But they contrasted with his restrained stance when he and Starmer met at Turnberry in Scotland on Monday, after the UK prime minister said Britain would give recognition by September unless Israel met certain conditions, including allowing for a ceasefire in Gaza and allowing UN food aid to enter the territory to feed its population.
“I’m not going to take a position, I don’t mind him taking a position,” Trump told reporters when asked if he objected to Starmer’s move.
The US president’s response to Starmer seemed markedly softer than his riposte after Macron’s statehood announcement last week, which angered Israel and its supporters.
“What he says doesn’t matter,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “He’s a very good guy. I like him, but that statement doesn’t carry weight.”
The initial softer public posture toward Starmer came as Trump publicly contradicted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, over conditions in Gaza, which numerous international aid agencies have described as famine.
Netanyahu had said that, in contrast to the aid group assessments and searing images of hungry children, no one was starving in Gaza.
Asked if he agreed, Trump said: “Based on television, I would say ‘not particularly’, because those children look pretty hungry to me. There’s real starvation, you can’t fake that.”
Some of Trump’s most prominent supporters have become increasingly vocal in their criticism of Israel’s conduct, amid polling evidence that Americans generally are losing sympathy for a country that has traditionally been viewed as one of the US’s closest allies.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former adviser and still one of his leading cheerleaders with his War Room podcast, told Politico that the president’s condemnation of the food situation in Gaza would hasten Israel’s loss of support among his base.
“It seems that for the under-30-year-old Maga base, Israel has almost no support, and Netanyahu’s attempt to save himself politically by dragging America in deeper to another Middle East war has turned off a large swath of older Maga diehards,” Bannon said. “Now President Trump’s public repudiation of one of the central tenets of [Netanyahu’s] Gaza strategy – ‘starving’ Palestinians – will only hasten a collapse of support.”
Another Trump supporter, the far-right Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, became the latest – and perhaps most surprising – public figure to label Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide”.
“It’s the most truthful and easiest thing to say that Oct 7th in Israel was horrific and all hostages must be returned, but so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza,” she posted on X.
The comments came as a new Gallup poll showed support among Americans for Israel’s actions in Gaza down to 32%, the lowest since the organization began asking the question in November 2023 – a month after the murderous Hamas raid that killed almost 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians and led to another 250 to be taken hostage.
Israel’s military response has led to about 60,000 Palestinians being killed, according to the Gaza health ministry.
While Gallup’s poll showed support for Israel’s offensive still high, at 71%, among Republicans, Thom Tillis, a GOP senator for North Carolina who plans to step down at the next election, said Gaza could be a political problem for Trump, the Hill reported.
“I think that the American people at the end of the day are a kind people. They don’t like seeing suffering, nor do I think the president does,” Tillis said. “If you see starvation, you try to fix it.”
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Fox News that Trump’s backing for Netanyahu remained unshaken. “Let me assure you that there is no break between the prime minister of Israel and the president,” he told Fox News. “Their relationship, I think, [is] stronger than it’s ever been, and I think the relationship between the US and Israel is as strong as it’s ever been.”
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is due to visit Israel on Thursday, where he will meet with officials “to discuss next steps in addressing the situation in Gaza”, a US official told AFP.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
