Former President Trump held back Thursday evening on endorsing an independent Palestinian state when asked during the first general election presidential debate if he would support its creation if it brought peace in the region.
“I’d have to see,” Trump said at the CNN event in Atlanta.
U.S. policy across Republican and Democratic administrations and Congress have stated support for a two-state solution to resolve the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, and that an independent Palestinian state should be established through direct negotiations between the two parties.
President Biden has put the creation of a Palestinian state at the end of a three-phase cease-fire proposal aimed at ending the war, and he blamed Hamas as holding back from allowing the first phase of the deal — an immediate six-week cease-fire — to be implemented.
Trump pushed back on Biden’s assertion that Israel supports a cease-fire proposal with Hamas, saying that Israel “wants to keep going” in its military operation to eliminate the U.S.-designated terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
“[Biden] said the only one who wants to keep [fighting] is Hamas, actually Israel is the one — and you should let them go and let them finish the job,” Trump said.
The former president has previously said that Israel should “finish the job,” while also criticizing Israel as having bad “public relations” for the length of the war, now nearly nine months since Hamas launched its terror attack against Israel on Oct. 7.