President Donald Trump will meet this afternoon at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington to discuss a host of pressing Middle East issues.
Netanyahu is the first foreign head of state to be received by Trump in his second term in office.
They meet in the third week of a six-week cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group featuring swaps of handfuls of Israeli hostages for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, many of them terrorists serving life terms for murder.
Netanyahu will meet with Trump in the Oval Office at 4:05 p.m., followed by a larger meeting with top officials from both administrations, a press conference to follow, and a dinner at the White House.
Topics before the two leaders are the extension of the Israel–Hamas cease-fire into a second phase on terms that still must be negotiated, the resumption of normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the future of the war-torn Gaza Strip, the status of the cease-fire with the Hezbollah terrorist group in Lebanon, and the future of U.S. aid to Israel.
Also hovering over the two nations’ relations is Trump’s recent proposal to resettle 1.5 million Gazans, either temporarily or permanently, in Egypt or Jordan, both of which have already rejected the idea.
“President Trump remains the most pro-Israel president in United States history,” a senior Trump administration official told reporters this morning.
The official recapped Trump’s first-term record on Israel, including recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. Embassy there, and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, which it captured in 1967 from Syria.
Trump brokered “the historic Abraham Accords, the most significant Middle East peace agreement in half a century,” the official said. “Israel has no better friend than President Trump.”
The official contrasted Trump’s policy toward Israel with that of his predecessor, President Joe Biden, under whose administration Israel saw a “deterioration” in its relations with the United States.
The official said the United States recognizes Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and acknowledges Israeli leadership in decimating Hezbollah, Hamas, and Iran’s defenses.
“This was all accomplished despite the Biden administration’s attempts to shackle Israel’s response to threats to their own security,” the official said.
Trump deserves credit, the official said, for applying the pressure that brought about the cease-fire even before he was inaugurated, and, since taking office, for extending the cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.
The cease-fire is the most pressing order of business. Hamas has so far returned 13 living hostages of the 33 agreed to for the first phase. Hamas and Israel both say eight of the 33 are dead, with their bodies scheduled for return. Israeli hostages eligible for release in the first phase include women, children, the sick or wounded, and old men.
So far, at least 583 Palestinian prisoners have been released in exchange.
The second phase aims for a complete withdrawal and the release of all remaining living hostages, including male soldiers.
Israel has expressed reservations, though, about a complete withdrawal while Hamas remains in power. Netanyahu particularly objects to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pulling out of the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza–Egypt frontier, where Hamas smuggles in weapons.
Trump was guarded about the cease-fire’s long-term prospects.
“I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold,” he told reporters on Feb. 3.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has said the United States approves Israel going back to war if Hamas breaks the deal.
Netanyahu is under pressure from his coalition members to abandon the cease-fire and resume fighting in Gaza to eliminate Hamas. Itamar Ben Gvir quit his cabinet post as national security minister to protest the cease-fire. Treasury Minister Bezalel Smotrich has said he'll do the same if the war isn’t resumed.
Meanwhile, Hamas has used the cease-fire to boost its image and is recruiting new soldiers to replace the thousands killed during the war.
