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Former US president Donald Trump met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday and sought to play down past tensions between them as he called for hostages held by Hamas “to be given back immediately”.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump said their relationship “was never bad . . . we’ve always had a very good relationship”.
The pair had been close while Trump was in office, but their relationship soured in late 2020. Trump was critical of Netanyahu after he congratulated President Joe Biden for winning the 2020 election and later criticised him for backing out of an operation to kill former Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani.
Trump on Friday also took aim at his presumptive Democratic opponent Kamala Harris’s call for a ceasefire and criticism of the intense humanitarian suffering in Gaza. “I think her remarks were disrespectful,” he said.
Netanyahu’s far-right allies also hit out at Harris for her Wednesday night comments after meeting Netanyahu, in which she voiced more empathy for Palestinian suffering and took a tougher tone on Israel than Biden has. “There will be no halt to the war, Madame Candidate,” Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s ultranationalist national security minister, wrote on X.
Biden administration officials say they are very close to reaching a ceasefire-for-hostages deal that has proven elusive for months.
Netanyahu on Friday said he hopes to be close to a deal and is “eager to have one”. He said he plans to send negotiators to Rome next week to continue the discussions. CIA director Bill Burns will also head to Rome this weekend to take part in the talks, which will also include Qatari and Egyptian officials.
Biden hopes securing a ceasefire deal will burnish his legacy as a one-term president and pledged to work towards that end while he remained in power. He spoke with Jordan’s King Abdullah by phone on Friday as part of those efforts.
With the Israeli parliament or Knesset set to go on summer break next week, diplomats are hopeful Netanyahu will face less pressure from far-right members of his coalition who have threatened to topple his government should he agree to a deal. The Knesset will not return to session until late October, mostly putting on hold any immediate threat to the prime minister’s rule.
Trump has also called for an end to the fighting in Gaza, telling Fox News ahead of his meeting with Netanyahu that Israel must end the war “and get it done quickly”.
He said Israel is “getting decimated” by negative publicity about its prosecution of the war. According to his campaign’s account of the meeting, Trump “pledged that when he returns to the White House, he will make every effort to bring peace to the Middle East”.
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