Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sharply criticized his Democratic political rivals, and warned of dire consequences for the Middle East if he was not reelected, as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida on Friday.
The meeting capped a week in which Netanyahu addressed the US Congress and held talks with President Joe Biden and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, the vice president, who took the Israeli leader to task over the situation in Gaza in a meeting the previous day.
“We have incompetent people running our country,” Trump said while sitting across from Netanyahu.
“If we win, it’ll be very simple. It’s all gonna work out, and very quickly,” Trump said. “If we don’t, you could end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe a third world war.”
Trump’s campaign later released a statement on the meeting, saying he “pledged that when he returns to the White House, he will make every effort to bring peace to the Middle East and combat anti-Semitism from spreading throughout college campuses across the United States.”
Trump warmly greeted Netanyahu and his wife Sara, kissing her on both cheeks and then clasping hands with the long-serving prime minister as they arrived at the Republican’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Netanyahu posted a photo online showing him holding a hat that said “TOTAL VICTORY” — which he has vowed to achieve against Hamas in Gaza — as he stood next to Trump.
‘Disrespectful’
The tone was in notable contrast to Netanyahu’s meeting with Harris on Thursday, in which the vice president told him to seal a Gaza peace deal and insisted that she would not be “silent” on the suffering in the Palestinian enclave.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time,” Harris told reporters.
Trump on Friday described Harris as a “radical left person” and said he thought “her remarks were disrespectful — they weren’t very nice pertaining to Israel.”
Gaza has been devastated by more than nine months of Israeli operations against Hamas, which launched a shock attack in October that resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
More than 39,175 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory campaign, according to data provided by the health ministry of Hamas-run Gaza, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.
Netanyahu had a notably warmer relationship with Trump than with Biden, and has clashed with the current president’s administration on issues including civilian casualties in Gaza and the speed of US weapons deliveries to Israel.
In his address to Congress, the Israeli leader praised both Biden and Trump, but particularly lauded controversial measures taken by the former president during his term in office.
“I… want to thank President Trump for all the things he did for Israel. From recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights to confronting Iran’s aggression to recognizing Jerusalem as our capital and moving the American embassy there,” Netanyahu said.
