Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Israel on Sunday for a gathering with US President Donald Trump that he hopes will reset relations with Washington after tensions with the earlier administration over the Gaza conflict.
Netanyahu, the primary overseas chief to go to Trump since his inauguration final month, leaves with a six-week ceasefire in Gaza nonetheless holding and negotiations aimed toward a second part anticipated to start this week.
“The choices we made within the conflict have already modified the face of the Center East,” he mentioned on the airport earlier than his departure for the assembly anticipated on Tuesday.
“Our selections and the braveness of our troopers have redrawn the map. However I consider that, working carefully with President Trump, we will redraw it even additional and for the higher.”
In his earlier time period, Trump handed Netanyahu a collection of successes, together with relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and the signing of the Abraham Accords, normalising relations between Israel and quite a lot of Arab states together with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Trump’s new administration consists of a number of pro-Israel figures anticipated to endorse enlargement of Israeli settlements within the occupied West Financial institution and resist worldwide stress over the conflict in Gaza.
POTENTIAL FOR MORE CHANGE
The conflict, which erupted within the wake of the Hamas-led assault on Israel in October 2023 and drew within the Iranian-backed Hezbollah motion in southern Lebanon, has upended the area, with the potential for extra change to return.
In addition to the ceasefire, talks are anticipated to concentrate on Saudi Arabia and Iran, which final yr launched lots of of missiles and drones in opposition to Israel.
Trump stop a world nuclear take care of Tehran in 2018 and each he and Netanyahu have vowed to cease Iran growing nuclear weapons. In the meantime, issues have grown in Iran that the brand new president may give Netanyahu the go-ahead to hit its nuclear websites.
Each leaders have additionally pushed to incorporate Saudi Arabia in new regional preparations constructing on the Abraham Accords, which Trump has mentioned he expects it to hitch. Riyadh has additionally pledged a U.S. funding package deal that Trump desires to succeed in $1 trillion.
For Netanyahu, whose worldwide isolation over the Gaza conflict was underlined by an arrest warrant from the Worldwide Legal Court docket (ICC) on allegations of conflict crimes, the go to gives an opportunity to burnish his diplomatic credentials in Washington, which has come out strongly in opposition to the ICC.
Regardless of former president Joe Biden’s assist for Israel through the Gaza conflict, relations had been usually strained and Netanyahu has not visited the White Home since returning to workplace on the finish of 2022.
COMPETING PRESSURES
Netanyahu can be trying to steadiness competing pressures from his personal coalition.
Israel’s steadfast opposition to any transfer in the direction of a Palestinian state, which has strengthened within the wake of the conflict in Gaza, stands as a possible impediment to a take care of Saudi Arabia, which has beforehand insisted on at the least agreeing a pathway to an unbiased Palestine.
The Gaza ceasefire deal, agreed with the involvement of Trump’s Center East envoy Steve Witkoff, has additionally met robust opposition from hardliners who say it ended the combating earlier than Hamas was lastly defeated.
Eldad Shavit, a former intelligence official who labored within the prime minister’s workplace, mentioned Netanyahu seemed to be balancing stress from Trump to stay to the ceasefire and home opposition to the deal.
“He desires to ensure Trump is on his facet, however he additionally desires to ensure his authorities doesn’t collapse,” he mentioned.
