Netanyahu of Israel goes to us to meet Trump: NPR

Like Aviv, Israel – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that he would discuss “victory over Hamas”, contravening Iran and expanding diplomatic relations with Arab countries during his meeting with US President Donald Trump.

Tuesday’s meeting at the White House will be the first of Trump with a foreign leader since his return to the position. This occurs while the Arab mediators starting the intimidating work to broke the next phase of an agreement to finish the war in the Gaza Strip and release dozens of hostages held by activists.

Hamas, which quickly reaffirmed its control over Gaza since the ceasefire took place last month, said that it would not release the hostages that should free itself in the second endless phase in war and the complete removal of Israeli forces.

Netanyahu, who undergoes increasing pressures of far -right partners, to resume war after the end of the first phase in early March, said that Israel was still attached to victory over Hamas and the return of all the hostages captured in activists October. 7, 2023 attack which sparked the war.

We don’t know where Trump is in all of this.

He was a fervent supporter of Israel, but also undertook to end the wars in the Middle East and took credit for helping to negotiate the cease-fire agreement. The agreement interrupted the fighting and led to the release of 18 hostages which had been detained for more than 15 months, as well as hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Netanyahu kisses Trump’s call to the peace by force ”

In a statement published before his departure on Sunday, Netanyahu said that they would discuss “victory over Hamas, reaching the release of all our hostages and dealing with the Iranian terrorist axis in all its components”, referring to the ‘ Iranian alliance of militant groups across the regions, including Hamas.

He said that by working together, they could “strengthen security, expand the circle of peace and reach an era of peace remarkable by force”.

The war began when thousands of activists led by Hamas burst into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mainly civilians and taking around 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages were released during a week-long ceasefire in November 2023, eight were rescued alive and dozens of bodies were recovered by Israeli forces.

The air and land war of Israel killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, more than half of women and children, according to local health authorities who do not say how many deaths were fighters. The war has left large parts of several cities in ruins and moved around 90% of the Gaza population of 2.3 million people.

Under the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, Hamas will release a total of 33 hostages, including eight, Hamas, says it is dead, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The Israeli forces withdrew most of the regions and allowed the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to the northern northern.

Negotiations on the second phase, in which the war would end and the 60 remaining hostages would have returned, should begin on Monday. If the United States, Qatar and Egypt are unable to negotiate an agreement between Israel and Hamas, war could resume in early March.

Aspirations for a greater agreement

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff joined the ceasefire negotiations for a year in their last weeks last month and has helped push the agreement on the finish line. He met Netanyahu in Israel last week and the two were to officially start the talks in the second phase of Washington on Monday.

Trump, who negotiated normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries during his first mandate, was looking for a broader and potentially historical agreement in which Israel would forge links with Saudi Arabia.

But the kingdom, which resisted similar supplications of the Biden administration, said that it would only accept such an agreement if the war ends and that there is a credible path to a Palestinian state in Gaza , in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territories that Israel captured in the war of the Middle East of 1967.

The Netanyahu government is opposed to the Palestinian state, and a key partner, the far -right Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, threatened to leave the power coalition if the war does not resume next month. This would increase the probability of the first elections to which Netanyahu could be elected.