Benjamin Netanyahu to meet Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 4
The visit will make the Israeli prime minister the first foreign leader to be invited to Trump’s residence since he took office last week
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and President Donald Trump participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House, Sept. 15, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Benjamin Netanyahu says he will meet President Donald Trump at the White House next week, a date that would make the Israeli prime minister the first foreign leader to be invited to Trump’s residence since he retook office.
Netanyahu’s office announced the Feb. 4 visit on Tuesday. As of Tuesday afternoon, Trump does not appear to have posted about the visit on Truth Social, the social network he owns.
The meeting will come more than two weeks into the Israel-Hamas ceasefire Trump helped broker. Trump has sent mixed signals about whether he expects the ceasefire, whose latter stages have yet to be negotiated, to last. In recent days, he has also discussed efforts to encourage Arab states to take in Palestinians from Gaza.
Trump’s quick invitation draws a contrast with his predecessor, Joe Biden, who invited Netanyahu for a White House meeting more than six months after Netanyahu won the November 2022 Israeli election. That delay reflected significant tensions between Biden and Netanyahu at the time stemming from clashes over policy.
Netanyahu had a close relationship with Trump during the president’s first term, from 2017 to 2021, during which Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and brokered normalization deals between Israel and several Arab states.
Since his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump has removed sanctions on extremist Israeli settlers and allowed the delivery of heavy bombs to Israel.
“Your first term as president was filled with groundbreaking moments in the history of the great alliance between our two countries,” Netanyahu said in a video celebrating Trump’s inauguration last week. “I believe that working together again, we will raise the U.S.-Israel alliance to even greater heights.”
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