Donald Trump once promised to be the “neutral guy” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and said he didn’t want to assign fault in the never-ending impasse.

Trump struck a very different tone on Sunday, telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would recognize an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital and squarely blaming Palestinian “hatred and violence" for the ongoing failure of Middle East peace efforts.


Not to be outdone, in her own meeting with Netanyahu a few hours later, Clinton told the Israeli leader that she opposes, in the words of a senior campaign aide, "any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including by the U.N. Security Council."

That statement undoubtedly pleased Netanyahu but could put Clinton at odds with President Barack Obama. Obama officials have been debating whether, as a last act in the name of Middle East peace, Obama should urge the United Nations to offer parameters for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Netanyahu strongly opposes such a move. Clinton's statement, reiterating a position she has held since at least March, could have the effect of boxing in Obama, at least until after the November presidential election.

The two get-togethers spotlighted the U.S.-Israel relationship on the eve of the first presidential debate and likely drew the close attention of Jewish American voters. They also prompted complaints from Trump critics that Netanyahu was legitimizing Trump on the world stage.

Netanyahu met with the New York mogul on his own turf on Sunday morning: his Trump Tower residence. A Trump campaign statement said the meeting, which also included Israel's ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, lasted for more than an hour. A photo released by Trump's campaign showed the two men smiling broadly as they shook hands against a backdrop of ornate gold furnishings in Trump's apartment.

Clinton met with Netanyahu for nearly an hour at a W Hotel, according to the prime minister's office, along with her senior aide, Jake Sullivan, and Dermer.

Trump's statement said the two men had discussed the U.S.-Israel relationship, Iran and Islamic terrorism.

On the Middle East peace process, the statement said that "Trump recognized that Israel and its citizens have suffered far too long on the front lines of Islamic terrorism. He agreed with Prime Minister Netanyahu that the Israeli people want a just and lasting peace with their neighbors, but that peace will only come when the Palestinians renounce hatred and violence and accept Israel as a Jewish State."

That is a switch for Trump, who not only said in February that he would adopt a "neutral" approach to the peace process, but also refused to assign blame for the decades-long impasse between the parties. "I don’t want to say whose fault it is” Trump said in a Feb. 17 MSNBC town hall.

And it continued a process Trump began in March, when he addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, telling the influential pro-Israel lobbying group that he shared its alarm about the nuclear deal with Iran and excoriated the Palestinians’ “culture of hatred.”

The old Trump boasted awkwardly of his leading role in New York’s Salute to Israel Parade and told a crowd of conservative Jewish donors “I don’t want your money.” On Sunday, Trump offered a list of talking points that could have been written by AIPAC itself.

Aaron David Miller, who has served as a senior Middle East peace negotiator under several presidents, said he was struck by Trump's language about Jerusalem and the peace process.

"These positions are a far cry from Trump's earlier views," said Miller, now a vice president at the nonpartisan Wilson Center in Washington.

The statement also noted that Trump and Netanyahu had "discussed at length Israel's successful experience with a security fence that helped secure its borders” — a clear allusion to Trump's vow to build a secure wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

But Trump's statement included no reference to the U.N. or outside mediation of the Palestinian conflict.

"It's striking that there was no mention of that," said Dennis Ross, a former Obama White House national security official and Middle East peace negotiator under several presidents.

Readouts of the meeting from the Trump and Clinton camps also diverged on the question of the status of Jerusalem. The Clinton aide's account did not mention the Israeli-controlled city — a major flashpoint in the conflict with the Palestinians, who claim much of it as their own.

Many presidential candidates have vowed to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's official capital, a position endorsed by the U.S. Congress, but no president has followed through on the pledge, which Palestinians furiously oppose.

Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and former peace process negotiator, called Trump's pledge "standard fare for presidential candidates wooing the Jewish vote. ... But the pledge has never been fulfilled because they all discover, if they win office, that it would be an incendiary act putting the lives of Israelis and others at risk. American Jews have learned not to be swayed by such campaign pledges."

Hillary Clinton has called for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and moving the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, since at least 1999 . She made no discernible effort to do so as secretary of state, however.

Netanyahu has thus far avoided entanglement with the 2016 campaign. Israeli media reported that Sunday's meetings came together after Netanyahu, in New York this month for the United Nations' annual General Assembly session, expressed an interest in seeing the candidates. A meeting was first arranged with Trump but only confirmed once a meeting with Clinton was also nailed down to avoid any perception of bias.

Four years ago, Obama aides considered Netanyahu a brazen supporter of Mitt Romney, whom he hosted in a summer 2012 visit. Pro-Romney campaign ads also aired in Florida that fall featuring news footage of Netanyahu criticizing Obama’s Middle East policies. (Netanyahu aides said they were never consulted about the ads.)

Though Clinton and Netanyahu occasionally butted heads during her tenure as secretary of state, Israeli officials consider her more in sync with their worldview than Obama, who repeatedly clashed with the Israeli prime minister through two failed pushes to secure a peace deal with the Palestinians and over the July 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

Netanyahu denounced that pact as a "bad deal" and a mortal threat to his country because it allows Iran to develop nuclear weapons soon after most of its provisions expire in a decade; he pressed his case on a visit to Capitol Hill that had the White House openly trashing the Israeli leader as a naked GOP partisan.

Polls in Israel have shown public opinion roughly divided between Trump and Clinton. Some Israelis approve of Trump's hard-line views toward Islamic radicalism and his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. But he has unsettled others with his unpredictability and comments like a (quickly reversed) call for Israel to repay the U.S. for foreign aid.

Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sept. 25. | Trump campaign

In the U.S., one recent poll showed Clinton with a 66 percent-23 percent lead over Trump among Jewish voters in Florida. (The poll was conducted by a firm that has also worked for the liberal Israel policy group J Street, which has staunchly criticized Netanyahu.)

During Netanyahu’s 2013 reelection campaign, Trump recorded a video endorsement of the Israeli leader, telling Israelis, “You truly have a great prime minister… he’s a winner, highly respected and highly thought of by all.” Netanyahu, Trump added, is a “terrific guy.”

With Clinton arguing that Trump is unfit to lead the U.S. on the global stage, Netanyahu subtly boosted Trump by appearing with him, the columnist Chemi Shalev wrote in the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

"The truth is that there is only one candidate who desperately needs Netanyahu’s blessing and legitimization, and his name isn’t Clinton. Only Donald Trump will benefit from Netanyahu placing him on an equal footing with his rival. Only he will require the stamp of kashrut [kosher] that Netanyahu can give him," Shalev wrote.

Miller was more skeptical of the meeting's effect.

"If it helps anyone other than Bibi it might benefit Trump but ever so slightly," he said. "I guarantee you that within 6 months Bibi and whoever becomes president will be annoying the hell out of one another.”