Behind closed doors, Donald Trump has made his approach to the Israel-Hamas war clear. If he’s reelected, Israel should continue its “war on terror” unabated, he told wealthy supporters at a private event this month, and protesters who object must be “stopped.” “Any student that protests, I throw them out of the country,” he told donors at a May 14 event, as The Washington Post reported Monday, suggesting he would deport demonstrators as president. Pro-Palestinian protesters, the former president said, were part of a “radical revolution” in America. “If you get me reelected, we’re going to set that movement back 25 or 30 years.” The closed-door remarks—in which he reportedly asked, “How can a Jewish person vote for a Democrat?”—underscore Trump’s hardline posture toward the protests, which he’s sought to capitalize on politically, and his lack of a “red line.”
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden—who has been critical of Israel’s approach but has declined so far to meaningfully change his policy toward the conflict—has failed to define the red line he drew around Rafah. Previously, he had said Benjamin Netanyahu would cross it by expanding a ground operation into the civilian-dense city. When the prime minister did just that, Biden suggested that the red line remained intact because Israeli Defense Forces hadn’t “gone into the population centers.”
After an IDF strike killed dozens in a civilian tent camp in Rafah over the weekend, in the deadliest incident of this month’s offensive in the southern Gaza city, Biden’s red line seems as blurry as ever: “The issue is the red line has been more than crossed,” as a United States official told HuffPost’s Akbar Shahid Ahmed. “It’s been bombed.” As Axios reported Monday, the US is assessing whether that attack—which Netanyahu claimed was a “tragic mistake”—defied Biden’s red line. “Israel has a right to go after Hamas,” an administration spokesperson said. “But as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.” The administration has not been clear enough—lagging far behind the international community and many Democrats. “Israel must do more to protect innocent civilians,” Senator Cory Booker said Monday, calling for an “immediate” ceasefire. “This was done in open defiance of [Biden’s] red line,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “It is long past time for the President to live up to his word and suspend military aid.”
It remains to be seen what Biden, whose coalition is divided over the war, will do. But if he really has a red line in mind that his opponent very clearly does not, he will need to be willing to do more than break rhetorically from Netanyahu: “There is a reason [Biden] said not to try to invade Rafah,” Representative Mark Pocan said Monday. “Let’s mean what we say.”
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