The Trump campaign released a 16-point policy document Wednesday outlining the candidate's positions on key issues in U.S.-Israel relations, including security aid, relations with the Palestinians, the European Union, and the United Nations, the movement to boycott Israel, and the Iran deal.
Announced via Medium by campaign advisors Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, the platform contains one of the most detailed policy statements released so far by the Trump campaign. It envisions a sharp departure from U.S.-Israel relations under the Obama administration, which were often defined by diplomatic crises and administration attacks on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The platform's foreign policy views on Israel are more in line with traditional conservative thinking than Trump's statements on NATO and Russia, among others.
The document declares that "Military cooperation and coordination between Israel and the U.S. must continue to grow," adding that a Trump administration would not be constrained in the amount and kind of aid it provides Israel by the Memorandum of Understanding reached this year between Israel and the Obama administration.
The platform commits a Trump administration to combating anti-Israel initiatives in the UN and by the EU, and calls boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) activism on U.S. college campuses "inherently anti-Semitic."
The sharpest break with Obama and Clinton policy on Israel is reserved for the Palestinians. Whereas the Obama administration has sought to champion the Palestinian cause and has, as a matter of policy, refused to criticize the Palestinians for rejecting diplomacy or for inciting violence and terror, Trump lays blame for the failure to achieve peace squarely on them.
"A two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians appears impossible as long as the Palestinians are unwilling to renounce violence against Israel or recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state," the statement declares.
"The Palestinian leadership, including the PA, has undermined any chance for peace with Israel by raising generations of Palestinian children on an educational program of hatred of Israel and Jews. The larger Palestinian society is regularly taught such hatred on Palestinian television, in the Palestinian press, in entertainment media, and in political and religious communications. The two major Palestinian political parties — Hamas and Fatah — regularly promote anti-Semitism and jihad," it continues.
A Trump administration, the platform says, would support direct negotiations between the parties with no preconditions— but not if the Palestinian state that is created would promote terrorism, corruption, and religious bigotry.