As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set off for Washington, D.C., on Sunday, he told Israelis that he was looking forward to reconnecting with an old friend.
“I’m leaving for a very important meeting with President Trump in Washington,” he said in a statement. “The fact that this would be President Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader since his inauguration is telling. I think it’s a testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance. It’s also a testimony to the strength of our personal friendship.”
Among the “very important issues” he expected to discuss, he said: “Victory over Hamas, achieving the release of all our hostages and dealing with the Iranian terror axis in all its components.”
Trump, too, commented on the get-together, telling reporters Sunday night, “Bibi Netanyahu’s coming on Tuesday, and I think we have some very big meetings scheduled.” He did not lay out an agenda.
The meeting comes at a delicate time, with the future of the current ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war hanging in the balance.
Before taking office last month, Trump pushed for a ceasefire, which Netanyahu struck at some political cost just days ahead of Trump’s inauguration. Now, Trump wants to see the six-week truce made permanent, which Netanyahu faces intense political pressure not to do.
Netanyahu announced that his meetings in Washington would constitute the beginning of negotiations toward a second phase in the ceasefire, required to begin by the first phase’s 16th day — Monday.
Netanyahu has approached the visit with obvious eagerness. He announced the date before Trump did, going several days before the White House publicly confirmed a Tuesday meeting. He set off days in advance, landing in Washington on Saturday. And when he got there, his office sent out a press release touting that he was staying at the president’s official guest residence for the 14th time, more, it said, than any other foreign leader in U.S. history.
He appears likely to face a challenging dynamic. Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, reportedly delivered a message to Netanyahu last week in Israel that the president expects him to continue the ceasefire no matter what Netanyahu’s government partners want.
Trump, for his part, appears to be continuing to press a long-shot proposal to have Arab countries take in Gaza Palestinians while the territory is rebuilt, an idea whose critics say it would amount to ethnic cleansing and undercut efforts toward a Palestinian state. Jordan has rebuffed the idea but has made other overtures to the United States in recent days, signaling, for example, that it could extradite a terrorist released from Israeli prison under the ceasefire deal. King Abdullah II is set to meet with Trump in Washington next week, in a meeting announced first by the White House.
Trump and Netanyahu are also likely to discuss their shared ambition to expand the Abraham Accords, normalization agreements between Israel and Arab countries struck during the first Trump administration. Saudi Arabia and potentially Qatar are seen as candidates for normalization, but only if the war in Gaza is over and progress is made toward Palestinian statehood.
Families of the remaining 79 hostages are also in Washington to call for a continued ceasefire that allows for the release of more of their loved ones, who include two living and four dead American citizens. UnXeptable, an anti-Netanyahu protest group, announced that Einav Zangauker, the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker who was briefly banned from Israel’s Knesset for her demonstrations, would lead a rally outside the White House on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, hostage families who have made more diplomatic appeals are also in the city and hoping for a meeting with Trump. Orna and Ronen Neutra, Israeli Americans whose son Omer was killed on Oct. 7 and remains a hostage, asked Jewish educators at a conference in Boston on Sunday to chant “Let them go” for a recording that could be shown to the president.
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