Palm Beach (United States) (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold crucial talks with Donald Trump in Florida on Monday with the US president pushing to move to the next stage of his fragile Gaza truce plan. Netanyahu is also expected to try to shift some focus onto Iran, amid reports he will call for more US strikes on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.
The meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, the fifth between the two leaders to be held in the United States this year, comes as some White House officials fear both Israel and Hamas are slow-walking the second phase of their ceasefire. Trump, who said Netanyahu had asked for the talks, is reportedly keen to announce as soon as January a Palestinian technocratic government for Gaza, and the deployment of an international stabilization force.
Netanyahu’s office said he met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Florida ahead of his talks with Trump, which are scheduled for 1pm (1800 GMT). Israeli government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian said Netanyahu would discuss ensuring that “Hamas is disarmed, Gaza is demilitarized” in the second phase of the agreement. He will also bring up the “danger Iran poses not only to the region of the Middle East, but the United States as well,” Bedrosian said.
Hamas’s armed wing, however, reiterated on Monday that it would not surrender its weapons — one of the key sticking points in the talks. “Our people are defending themselves and will not give up their weapons as long as the occupation remains,” the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades said in a video message. It also confirmed the death of their longtime spokesperson, Abu Obeida, months after Israel announced he had been killed in an airstrike in Gaza on August 30.
Netanyahu’s visit caps a frantic few days of international diplomacy in Palm Beach, where Trump hosted Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday for talks on ending Russia’s invasion. The Gaza ceasefire in October is one of the major achievements of Trump’s first year back in power, but his administration and regional mediators want to keep up the momentum.
The first phase of the truce deal stipulated that Hamas release the remaining hostages, both dead and alive, taken during its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. The group has so far returned all the living captives and the remains of all but one. Under the second stage, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, while Hamas is supposed to lay down its weapons. An interim authority is meanwhile meant to govern the Palestinian territory, and the international stabilization force (ISF) is to be deployed. Both sides, however, have alleged frequent ceasefire violations.
The Axios news outlet reported on Friday that Trump wanted to convene the first meeting of a new Gaza “Board of Peace” that he will chair at the Davos forum in Switzerland in January. But it said that senior White House officials were growing exasperated with what they viewed as efforts by Netanyahu to stall the peace process. “There are more and more signs that the American administration is getting frustrated with Netanyahu,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at London-based think tank Chatham House.
The Israeli and US administrations are increasingly at odds on many key issues, including Israel’s continued strikes on Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and in Syria. On Iran, Israeli officials and media have expressed concern in recent months that Iran is rebuilding its ballistic missile arsenal after it came under attack during the 12-day war with Israel in June. But Sina Toossi, a researcher at the Center for International Policy (CIP) in Washington, said Trump’s insistence that US strikes in June destroyed Tehran’s nuclear program had “removed Israel’s most powerful historical justification for US support for war with Iran.”
Netanyahu’s new focus on Iran’s missiles is “an effort to manufacture a replacement casus belli,” Toossi told AFP. Iran on Monday denounced the reports as a “psychological operation” against Tehran, emphasizing it was fully prepared to defend itself, and warning renewed aggression would “result in harsher consequences” for Israel.
© 2024 AFP
