Jerusalem:

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Sunday for the United States where he will become the first foreign leader to meet Donald Trump since the US president returned to office.

His visit comes as a fragile truce holds between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both operator groups are backed by Iran.

Before boarding his flight, Netanyahu said the pair would discuss “victory over Hamas, achieving the release of all our hostages and dealing with the Iranian terror axis”.

During his first term, Trump declared Israel “never had a better friend in the White House”, an attitude that appears to have endured.

Before departing, Netanyahu called it “telling” that he would be the first foreign leader to meet Trump since his inauguration.

“I think it’s a testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance,” he said.

After Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden had maintained military and diplomatic support for Israel.

But the Biden administration also distanced itself over the mounting death count from Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza and delays to aid deliveries.

Trump has moved quickly to reset relations.

Soon after returning to the White House, he reportedly approved a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, which the Biden administration had blocked, and lifted sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violence against Palestinians.

After the ceasefire took effect in Gaza last month following 15 months of war, Trump touted a plan to “clean out” the Palestinian territory, calling for Palestinians to move to neighbouring countries such as Egypt or Jordan.

His stance has reinforced Netanyahu’s need for strong US ties as he navigates domestic and regional pressures.

Celine Touboul, co-director of the Foundation for Economic Cooperation, a Tel Aviv think-tank, said “for Netanyahu, a privileged relationship with the White House is an essential tool”.

Stabilising the region 

Despite Trump’s early moves, Netanyahu will face a president determined to push his own agenda when the pair meet on Tuesday.

Trump officials have warned that “renewed fighting in the Middle East would distract the new Trump team from addressing what Trump defines as more pressing priorities”, the New York-based Soufan Center said.

These include “securing the southern US border from illegal migration and settling the Russia-Ukraine war”, the think tank said.

Beyond that, “Trump wants to reorient his priorities towards Asia-Pacific”, said David Khalfa, a researcher at the Jean Jaures Foundation in Paris.

“He believes, as did his predecessors, that he must stabilise the region first and create an anti-Iran coalition with his strategic partners,” including Israel and Saudi Arabia, he said.

‘Political margin’ 

Talks will also likely cover concessions Netanyahu must accept to revive normalisation efforts with Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh froze discussions early in the Gaza war and hardened its stance, insisting on a resolution to the Palestinian issue before making any deal.

“There is today an ideological alignment between the populist, Trumpist American right and the Israeli prime minister,” Khalfa said.

But Netanyahu’s “political margin is very small in the face Trump who does not have the pressure of re-election”, he added.

Indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are due to resume this week on the second phase of the Gaza truce agreement.

If successful, the deal could lead to the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, both dead and alive, and potentially end the war.

Netanyahu’s office said he would begin the discussions with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff on Monday.

But he faces intense pressure within his governing coalition from far-right politicians intent on restarting the Gaza war once the current six-week truce ends.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to quit the government if the war does not restart, potentially stripping Netanyahu of his majority.

The prime minister faces a choice between Washington’s demands and increasingly impatient political backers at home.

“If Trump asks him to make concessions to the Palestinians in order to obtain normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu will have to choose between a privileged relationship with the American president or maintaining his coalition,” Touboul said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

President Donald Trump has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House next week as the first foreign leader to visit in Trump’s second term, Netanhayu and the White House said Tuesday (January 28, 2025).

The announcement came as the United States pressures Israel and Hamas to continue a ceasefire that has paused a devastating 15-month war in Gaza. Talks about the ceasefire’s more difficult second phase, which aims to end the war, begin next Monday.

Also read | Trump wants Jordan and Egypt to accept more refugees, floats plan to ’just clean out’ Gaza

The White House letter shared by Netanyahu’s office, dated Tuesday, said “I look forward to discussing how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to counter our shared adversaries.”

The meeting on Feb. 4 is a chance for Netanyahu, under pressure at home, to remind the world of the support he has received from Trump over the years, and to defend Israel’s conduct of the war. Last year, the two men met face-to-face for the first time in nearly four years at Trump’s Florida Mar-a-Lago estate.

Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid, and Netanyahu is likely to encourage Trump not to hold up some weapons deliveries the way the Biden administration did, though it continued other deliveries and overall military support.

Netanyahu also wants Trump to put more pressure on Iran, and renew efforts to deliver a historic normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, a rival of Iran and the Arab world’s most powerful country.

Even before taking office this month, Trump was sending his special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, to the region to apply pressure along with the Biden administration to get the current Gaza ceasefire achieved.

But Netanyahu has vowed to renew the war if Hamas doesn’t meet his demands in negotiations over the ceasefire’s second phase, meant to discuss a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a “sustainable calm.”

Under the deal, more than 375,000 Palestinians have crossed into northern Gaza since Israel allowed their return on Monday morning, the United Nations said Tuesday. That represents over a third of the million people who fled in the war’s opening days.

Many of the Palestinians trudging along a seaside road or crossing in vehicles after security inspections were getting their first view of shattered northern Gaza under the fragile ceasefire, now in its second week.

Trump this week suggested that Egypt and Jordan take in Palestinians from Gaza, at least temporarily, so that “we just clean out that whole thing” — which Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinians swiftly rejected, fearing Israel would never allow a return.

Instead, Palestinians were determined to pitch makeshift shelters or sleep outdoors amid the vast piles of broken concrete or perilously leaning buildings. After months of crowding in squalid tent camps or former schools in Gaza’s south, they would finally be home.

“It’s still better for us to be on our land than to live on a land that’s not yours,” said Fayza al-Nahal as she prepared to leave the southern city of Khan Younis for the north.

At least two Palestinians set off for the north by sea, crowding into a rowboat with a bicycle and other belongings.

Hani Al-Shanti, displaced from Gaza City, looked forward to feeling at peace in whatever he found, “even if it is a roof and walls without furniture, even if it is without a roof.” One newly returned woman hung laundry in the ruins of her home, its walls blown out.

Under the ceasefire, the next release of hostages held in Gaza, and Palestinian prisoners from Israeli custody, is set to occur on Thursday, followed by another exchange on Saturday.

In the ceasefire’s six-week first phase, a total of 33 hostages taken in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that ignited the war should be released, along with almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners.

Israel this week said a list provided by Hamas confirmed the fears that eight of the 33 hostages to be freed are dead, bringing fresh grief to Israeli families who have long pressed the government to reach a deal to bring everyone home before time runs out.

On Tuesday, one of the first hostages to be released under the current ceasefire – just the second in the war – shared a glimpse of life in captivity.

Naama Levy, 20, wrote on social media that she spent most of the first 50 days alone before being reunited with other soldiers kidnapped from her military base on Oct. 7, well as other civilian captives.

“We strengthened each other until the day of our release, and also afterwards,” she wrote.

A surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza continued under the ceasefire.

“In this past week alone, approximately 4,200 trucks carrying aid have entered the Gaza Strip following inspections,” said Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel.

Under the deal, 600 trucks of aid are meant to enter per day.

The government of Qatar, a mediator in the ceasefire talks, said Tuesday that while complaints have been raised by both sides, no confirmed ceasefire violations have occurred that could cause the agreement to collapse.

The ceasefire is aimed at winding down the deadliest and most destructive war ever fought between Israel and Hamas. Militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7 assault and abducted another 250.

Israel responded with an air and ground offensive that has killed over 47,000 Palestinians, over half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It does not say how many of the dead were combatants. Israel says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.