Trump Beating Biden Bigly on Handling of Palestinian-Israeli Crisis, Poll Finds

The former president said on the campaign trail in 2016 that he would consider the possibility of brokering a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement as “the ultimate deal,” but the heavily-pro-Israel peace plan rolled out by his administration in early 2020 was decried by Palestine’s president as an agreement belonging in the “dustbin of history.”

Donald Trump has a better shot at “handling” the Israel-Hamas conflict than incumbent Joe Biden, a new poll has found.

According to a Wall Street Journal survey of 1,500 registered voters taken November 29-December 4, 44 percent of those polled picked Trump when asked “who is better able to handle this issue.” 32 percent picked Biden.

The comprehensive survey of American attitudes toward the incumbent president and his possible replacement found Mr. Biden lagging behind Mr. Trump by four percentage points, 43 percent to 47 percent, in a one-on-one matchup. Trump’s lead grows to 37 percent to 31 percent when including five potential third-party and independent candidates, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joe Manchin, Cornel West, Jill Stein and Lars Mapstead.

Trump’s attractiveness as an alternative to Biden in the WSJ’s polling began climbing from December 2022 onward, with the former commander-in-chief catching up to the current president in popularity in August and then tearing away from him as Biden’s ratings have plummeted. Foreign affairs aside, Americans’ preference for Mr. Trump’s return to power seems to stem more from domestic concerns, with 49 percent of those polled saying Trump’s policies had "helped" them personally, while only 23 percent could say the same for Biden. Trump leads his opponent on almost all major issues, including the economy, inflation, crime, and border security, with Biden deemed superior only on the issues of abortion and “tone in politics” (37 percent Biden, 31 percent Trump, respectively).

The polling, unfortunately, did not record Americans’ feelings toward presidential contenders in relation to the other major crisis in the world today – the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. Here, Trump has repeatedly boasted about his ability to end the conflict “in 24 hours,” without elaborating on how, except to say that he knows Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “very well,” and that he “would tell Zelensky, no more, you got to make a deal.”

On the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, Trump has been more ambivalent, first attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the intelligence failure on October 7, then expressing his full-throated support for Tel Aviv before the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobby, and then suggesting that “sometimes you have to let things play out,” and blaming Iran. But mostly, he has spent his breath blaming Biden, particularly over slow pace of return of American hostages, suggesting this was a sign that there was “no respect for our country or our leadership.”

During his presidency, Trump worked closely with Israel to normalize relations with a handful of Arab countries, and in 2020 rolled out a Palestinian-Israeli peace proposal, coordinated by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The controversial plan proposed a two-state solution, recognition of Israeli claims to occupied settlements in the West Bank, Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley, and Jerusalem as the country’s capital. For the Palestinian side, the plan proposed a $50 billion fund for infrastructure and investment, as well as a few neighborhoods of East Jerusalem for a Palestinian capital. Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced the plan, saying the Palestinians would never sell out their land in exchange for handouts, and that the plan itself belongs in the “dustbin of history.”

📊 A poll among voters in the United States shows that more people believe in #Trump's ability to cope with the conflict in #Gaza (44%) than in #Biden's ability to resolve the crisis (32%), the WSJ reports pic.twitter.com/dW0XT0nDNP

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) December 9, 2023

Trump has remained staunchly pro-Israel since leaving office, curiously complaining in 2021 that the Israeli lobby no longer had “absolute power over Congress,” and accusing American Jews of not caring enough about the Jewish state. As for Trump’s warm personal relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu, that came to a crashing end in late 2020, after Netanyahu rushed to congratulate Biden on his election victory in a vote Mr. Trump believes to this day was rigged against him.