Trump: Israel losing PR war in Gaza
Published on: Saturday, April 06, 2024
By: AFP
Children attend class at a makeshift classroom in a camp for displaced Palestinians in Rafah.
WASHINGTON: Former US President Donald Trump has said that Israel is “losing the PR war” in Gaza because of the images coming out of the territory and must end the conflict quickly.
“Every night, they’re releasing tapes of a building falling down. They shouldn’t be releasing tapes like that,” Trump said in an interview broadcast on The Hugh Hewitt Show on Thursday.
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“They’re doing, that’s why they’re losing the PR war. They, Israel is absolutely losing the PR war,” he said.
“You’ve got to get it over with, and you have to get back to normalcy,” Trump said. “You have to have a victory, and it’s taking a long time.”
“Get it over with. They’ve got to finish what they finish. They have to get it done,” the Republican presidential candidate said.
Trump’s comments came as US President Joe Biden warned Israel of a sharp shift in his policy over the Gaza war, amid growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and mounting domestic pressure in a US election year.
Trump’s comments came as Biden warned Netanyahu (right) over a sharp shift in US policy
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The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Friday that at least 33,091 people have been killed in the territory.
The toll includes at least 54 deaths over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 75,750 people have been wounded in the Gaza Strip.
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Israel said it was targeting a “Hamas gunman” when it killed seven Gaza aid workers, with the Israeli military admitting a series of “grave mistakes”.
Israel announced that it would allow “temporary” aid deliveries into famine-threatened northern Gaza, hours after the United States warned of a sharp shift in its policy over Israel’s war against Hamas militants.
Germany on Friday said Israel had “no more excuses” to delay the entry of aid, after nearly six months of war.
In a tense, 30-minute phone call on Thursday, US President Joe Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that United States policy on Israel was dependent on the protection of civilians and aid workers in Gaza, the first hint of possible conditions to Washington’s military support.
Just hours later, overnight in Jerusalem, Israel announced it would open more aid routes into the coastal Palestinian territory which Israel placed under siege at the start of the war nearly six months ago.
“Israel will allow the temporary delivery of humanitarian aid” through the Ashdod Port and the Erez land crossing, as well as increased deliveries from neighbouring Jordan at the Kerem Shalom crossing, Netanyahu’s office said.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong told Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, in comments published Friday, that Netanyahu’s initial comment on the deaths was “deeply insensitive”.
The Israeli leader had said: “It happens in war.” He said the killings were unintentional and pledged an investigation “right to the end”.
Wong told The Guardian that Australia does “not accept any suggestion that this is just something that can be brushed aside as just something that happens in war”.
Allies have been pressing Biden to leverage the billions of dollars in military aid sent by Washington.
US top diplomat Antony Blinken told reporters after the leaders’ phone call that, “If we don’t see the changes that we need to see, there’ll be changes in our own policy.”
He did not elaborate.
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