As Israel bombards Gaza in retaliation for the terrorist attack by Hamas earlier this month, 2024 Republican presidential aspirants have engaged in a vicious debate over who is less willing to welcome Palestinian refugees into the U.S. amid a growing humanitarian crisis and mounting civilian casualties.

Former President Donald Trump has falsely claimed that terrorists, including from Hamas, are flowing across the southern border and proposed reinstating a harsher version of his ban on travelers from many Muslim-majority countries as well as Gaza. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he believes all 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza are "all antisemitic" and the U.S. shouldn’t bring in any refugees, including “very young kids” who he said are trained to commit terrorist attacks. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley said that while “America has always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists,” but that if the Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan aren’t willing to take in refugees over vetting concerns, neither should the U.S.

“Why aren’t they opening the gates? Why aren’t they taking the Palestinians?” Haley asked on CNN on Sunday “You know why? Because they know they can’t vet them, and they don’t want Hamas in their neighborhood. So why would Israel want them in their neighborhood? So let’s be honest with what’s going on. The Arab countries aren’t doing anything to help the Palestinians because they don’t trust who is right, who is good, who is evil, and they don’t want it in their country.”

But by acknowledging not all Palestinians are sympathetic to Hamas — a July 2023 poll by the pro-Israel think tank the Washington Institute showed 62% of Gazans supported a continued ceasefire, 50% wanted Hamas to stop calling for Israel’s destruction and 70% supported the Palestinian Authority taking control of Gaza and Hamas disarming — Haley drew attacks from DeSantis, falsely claiming Haley “would import” Gazan refugees.

“Nikki Haley would import people. That’s been her position. I get that,” DeSantis told NBC News on Monday after welcoming American evacuees from Israel at an airport in Florida. “I would not import people. But you also have to speak the truth. And the truth is, in Gaza it is a dysfunctional, toxic society in part because they treat young people to hate Jews. That is embedded in their culture.”

“It doesn’t mean they’re all members of Hamas, but what it does mean is that’s not something you want to import into the United States,” he added.

Since then, DeSantis has pointed to Palestinian textbooks which have been described as antisemitic and the 2006 U.S.-backed elections in Gaza that saw Hamas assume power as evidence of the Palestinian people’s collective guilt.

According to the CIA, 40% of Gazans are under the age of 14, meaning they weren’t even alive in 2006, much less eligible to vote.

In Gaza, Israel has ordered the displacement of 1.1 million Palestinians as they amass troops on the border and rein down bombs on militants and civilians alike. Food, water, fuel and electricity have been either entirely cut off by Israel or cut off for a time as hospitals and water desalinization plants run out of fuel to keep generators running. The United Nations’ human rights agency quoted one of their experts describing the circumstances as an “ethnic cleansing.” The World Health Organization called Israel’s order that Gazan hospitals be evacuated “a death sentence.” On Tuesday, an explosion at a hospital killed hundreds of civilians, Palestinian health officials said. Hamas blamed Israel. Israel and the U.S. blamed the bombing on an errant rocket fired by another militant group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Thousands of Palestinian, Israeli and foreign civilians have been killed since the fighting broke out.

"What does a losing campaign do? Resort to desperate lies and mudslinging,” Haley spokesperson Nachama Soloveichik said in a statement responding to DeSantis’ comments. “Failing Ron DeSantis is trying to revive his corpse of a campaign by lying about Nikki Haley’s record. Everyone knows that Nikki opposed resettling Syrian refugees in South Carolina and in America, and she calls on Arab countries to take Gazan refugees. Ron DeSantis is out of time, out of money, and out of luck. Nikki's already in the passing lane, putting him in her rearview mirror.”

After emerging in polls as the strongest potential challenger to Trump, DeSantis’ campaign has floundered since officially announcing his candidacy. Funds are running low and he now trails the former president by 43 percentage points nationally on average and in Iowa by 30 percentage points, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.

While she’s polling at just 7% nationally, Haley has passed DeSantis in the polls in the important early primary state of New Hampshire, though she still trails Trump by 29 percentage points. In another early primary state where she once served as governor, South Carolina, she leads DeSantis, but is again trailing Trump by a sizable margin.

“Nikki Haley thinks she knows better than the American people because of her two years at the decidedly anti-Israel United Nations, but allowing Gaza refugees to be resettled in the United States is a clear national security threat,” South Carolina state Sen. Josh Kimbrell wrote in a Washington Times op-ed on Thursday. “Only after swift, severe backlash is Ms. Haley trying to walk back her position. The thing is: You don’t get do-overs as president. When Ron DeSantis says something, he means it. He doesn’t mince words”

Other presidential candidates, like fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott has argued the U.S. should cut off humanitarian aid to Gaza and send troops into the territory to rescue American hostages, something Vice President Mike Pence has also called for.

“I don't think that they're all antisemitic. I just can't tell you who's who. And part of the challenge that we have from a refugee perspective is coming to a conclusion: who's safe to bring in, who's not safe to bring in?” Scott said of refugees at a conversation at Georgetown University on Monday. “So I would say we're not bringing anyone. No refugees in from Gaza, period. I think that's the right decision, not because I think they're all antisemitic, but I can't tell the difference.”

There are other candidates, Nikki Haley has come to a different decision than Ron DeSantis. She believes that it's permissible, it appears, to allow folks in. That's a moderate part of the Republican Party,” Scott added of the former governor who first appointed him to his Senate seat.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a top-five polling candidate and the son of Indian immigrants, said he’d be willing to facilitate Palestinians' relocation to other countries “but this is not an issue where we should risk U.S. security or trade off the well-being of Americans here in the homeland,” according to Axios.

President Joe Biden, the man the Republicans are trying to beat, has not yet said if his administration will help Palestinians resettle in the U.S. Despite nearly six million Palestinian refugees living in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, the U.S. refugee program accepted only 56 Palestinians between October 2022 and September 2023, according to State Department data. That’s less of a tenth of a percent of the roughly 60,000 refugees accepted during that period, which was already far short of the Biden administration’s goal of 125,000 admissions.

Across the same period between 2021 and 2022, Palestinian refugees admitted to the U.S. numbered just 16.