Donald Trump is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida on Monday to try to advance the ceasefire deal that the president brokered in Gaza, while the Israeli leader is expected to make the case for new action against Iran.
Ahead of their closed-door meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters that the two leaders will discuss the need for Hamas to disarm, Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs, and Syria’s new government.
Standing alongside Trump, Netanyahu praised his U.S. counterpart.
“I’ll say it again and again and again, we’ve never had a friend like President Trump in the White House. It’s not even close,” he said. “And I think you can judge that by not merely by the frequency of our meetings, but by the content and the intensity.”
Trump responded, “Well, I just want to say that it’s very important who the prime minister and president of Israel is. We have a great relationship.
“He can be very difficult on occasion, but you need a strong man,” Trump added. “If you had a weak man, you wouldn’t have Israel right now. Israel would have been, you know, Israel, with most other leaders, would not exist today.”
Their meeting comes one day after the president hosted Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago as part of the U.S. bid to negotiate a peace deal with Russia.
While Trump has been working for an end to the war in Europe, progress has stalled in the Middle East.
The Israel-Hamas truce went into effect in October, ending the two-year conflict in Gaza that followed the Oct. 7 Hamas-led terror attack on Israel.
But there has been little movement on the more complex second phase of the peace process, raising concerns both sides are failing to take action to carry out the next phase of the deal.
More than 400 people have been killed in the Palestinian enclave since that agreement, local officials say, while Israel has accused Hamas of ceasefire violations including the delayed return of hostage remains — with one body still to be handed over.
The U.N. Security Council gave its approval to Phase 2 of Trump’s 20-point peace plan last month, which would see Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza and Hamas give up its weapons.
But few details have been publicly confirmed about the “Board of Peace” headed by Trump that would help oversee the territory’s governance, or the International Stabilization Force (ISF) that would be deployed to Gaza.
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