Head of Arab Americans for Trump says candidate supports two-state solution
Bishara Bahbah dismisses Trump’s pro-Israel policies during his presidency, says he believes former president will not advance his Muslim ban again
Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump supports a two-state solution, Arab Americans for Trump chairman Bishara Bahbah told The New Yorker in an interview published on Sunday.
Bahbah told the publication, in an article about Republican efforts to woo Arab voters, that he had spoken to Trump in an in-person meeting last month and told him that his main concern was peace in the Middle East, “particularly based on the two-state solution” and that Trump had responded, “A hundred percent” and the two had shaken hands on it.
Bahbah did not say whether Trump detailed how he hoped to achieve this, but it would face intense opposition from the current hardline Israeli government, which has voiced clear opposition to the move. In addition to long objecting to such a move, the government now says it would be a reward for the Palestinians for the October 7 massacre in which Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Bahbah said he had been a registered Democrat until a few months ago but has shifted his support to Trump over US President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
“This guy came into office announcing that he was a Zionist. From my perspective, an American president should not be a Zionist. An American president should be president of the people of the United States,” Bahbah said, referring to Biden.
He said he started Arab Americans for Trump after seeing the rising death toll in Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry currently claims has surpassed 39,000.
The toll cannot be verified, however, and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed more than 15,000 Hamas operatives in Gaza and another 1,000 inside Israel on October 7.
Bahbah said he believed Trump would make a better president because he “did not initiate wars, nor did he allow wars to continue under his watch.”
The Arab Americans for Trump chairman backed up this claim by referring to a post Trump made on his Truth Social website in June claiming that the war in Gaza would not have happened had he been president.
The former president has made this claim repeatedly and has said the same about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing war there but has not detailed how he would have prevented either of the wars.
Bahbah said he was also encouraged by Trump’s call in the Truth Social post to return to a peace plan but was not bothered by the fact that Trump’s decisions regarding Israel and the Palestinians during his presidency were overwhelmingly pro-Israel.
He acknowledged that “all the Arabs and Palestinians” were angered by actions taken by Trump such as moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, shutting down the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, and recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, but Bahbah said all these moves “pale in comparison with the Biden Administration being complicit in the genocide that is being committed in Gaza.”
Trump proposed a peace plan during his presidency which was dubbed “Peace to Prosperity.” The plan called for a demilitarized Palestinian state for which “Israel will maintain overriding security responsibility.” That state also would contain 15 Israeli settlement enclaves that would be “subject to Israeli civilian administration.”
The plan was met with heavy opposition by the Palestinians who believed that it demanded too many concessions from them and not enough from Israel and was designed to allow Israel to annex the areas of the West Bank where it had settlements.
Meanwhile, Trump expressed skepticism about the two-state solution only three months ago in an interview with Time Magazine.
“There was a time when I thought two states could work. Now I think two states is going to be very, very tough,” Trump said in the interview.
Bahbah also dismissed another policy from Trump’s presidency that is a source of concern for American Arabs — the Muslim ban. Bahbah said he did not believe Trump would advance the ban if he won a second term despite the former president saying in the past that the US needs “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering” the country.
Bahbah claimed it was former president Barack Obama who began the Muslim ban and that Trump’s was not as comprehensive as it seemed as the list contained “only” seven countries, all of which “happened to be Muslim countries.”
He said the issue was explained during a meeting with supporters in Dearborn with Trump’s close allies Richard Grenell and Dr. Massad Boulos which the former president did not attend. He was phoned during the meeting to address the crowd but did not respond and only called back later. According to Bahbah, this was a positive sign of how important the meeting was to Trump.
Responding to whether a potential return to the Muslim ban could potentially keep refugees from Gaza from entering the US, Bahbah, who was born and raised in Jerusalem, said he didn’t want Palestinians to leave “historic Palestine.”
“If the Palestinians leave historic Palestine, we would no longer have a Palestinian state. So I don’t want any Gaza refugees to leave. I want the war to end,” he said.
