Search

If Trump were president Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel, says former envoy

 Jason Greenblatt criticized Biden for ‘not confronting the Iranian regime sufficiently’ and his support of a two-state solution. 

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Former Trump envoy says Hamas wouldn’t have attacked Israel if the 45th President of the United States were still in office.

Jason Greenblatt told Ynet, “I believe that if President Trump were still the president, Hamas would not have attempted [the October 7 attack].”

He added, “Iran would be quieter, the Houthis would be quieter or Hezbollah wouldn’t be thinking of it because President Trump was a very strong president.”

Greenblatt continued, “He understood the region, the region understood him and largely appreciated him. I think most people were scared. He was very unpredictable and let’s say they behaved differently and better under his leadership.”

Greenblatt, the head of diplomacy at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, discussed Trump and the Middle East after touring Kfar Aza, one of the southern kibbutzim hardest hit by the Hamas massacre on October 7th.

Although he acknowledged that the Biden Administration was showing strong support for Israel, he was critical of the current US President for “not confronting the Iranian regime sufficiently” and his support of a two-state solution.

He was also critical of the U.S. urging Israel to enter a new phase of the war and said, “America shouldn’t be demanding anything of Israel. Israel’s here, Israel’s on the ground, like usually Israel’s defending itself by itself. So it’s not for any country to tell Israel what to do,” he said.

Read  New poll shows who is leading majority of swing states

Greenblatt continued, “This is Israel’s existence that we’re talking about. Israel is the one that suffered from the October 7 atrocities…I hope (the Biden Administration is) not making demands, but rather making helpful suggestions.”

He also said that the deployment of US aircraft carriers in the region was an effective deterrent against attack by Hezbollah and Iran but added that he was disappointed by the departure of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford carrier fleet.

As one of the architects of the 2020 Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain, Greenblatt expressed optimism for similar normalization efforts between the Jewish State and Saudi Arabia which was on the table before the beginning of the current war.

Greenblatt predicted Israel and Saudi Arabia would “begin to pick up the pieces” of the normalization agreement at the end of the war.