Former US president Donald Trump said Israel should bring the Gaza war to a quick end.
"Get it over with. They've got to finish what they finish. They have to get it done," said the Republican presidential candidate in an interview broadcast on Thursday by conservative US radio host Hugh Hewitt.
"Get it over with, and get it over with fast, because we have to, you have to get back to normalcy and peace," Trump continued. Trump made similar statements at the end of March in an interview with the newspaper Israel Hayom.
When asked whether he was still "100% on Israel's side," Trump did not give him a clear answer. Instead, he spoke about the effect of images of the Gaza war, which had been disseminated by the Israeli army on the internet.
"They're releasing the most heinous, most horrible tapes of buildings falling down," said Trump. "And people are imagining there's a lot of people in those buildings, or people in those buildings, and they don't like it."
He said he did not understand why Israel published such images.
"I guess it makes them look tough. But to me, it doesn't make them look tough. They're losing the PR war. They're losing it big," he said.
Trump did not explain how he would deal with the extremely complex conflict situation in the Middle East in the event of re-election. However, he once again criticized the Middle East policy of his successor Joe Biden and called the Democratic incumbent an "idiot" and "the dumbest president we've ever had."
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre with more than 1,200 deaths that militants from the Palestinian Hamas movement and other Islamist groups carried out in Israel on October 7.
Israel responded with massive airstrikes and a ground offensive. In view of the high number of civilian casualties and the catastrophic situation in the Gaza Strip, Israel has come in for increasing criticism internationally.
