Former US president Donald Trump warmly welcomed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Friday for their first meeting since their ties very publicly soured after Trump lost re-election in 2020.
With cameras rolling and flashing, the two men sought to repair what had been seen as one of the closest relationships between leaders when they were in office, now that Trump is once again the Republican presidential nominee three months out from a new election.
“Now I’m honored. Come on in, come on in,” Trump said as Netanyahu and his wife Sara walked up the steps of the Mar-a-Lago entrance.
“I brought you the best part!” Netanyahu quipped, gesturing at his wife.
“We’ve missed you,” said Sara as she and Trump exchanged kisses.
“It was the greatest dinner I’ve ever had,” said Trump to Netanyahu, perhaps referencing a previous meal the two shared while he was president.
Trump and Netanyahu then locked hands and the former president pulled the prime minister in for somewhat of a bro-hug while saying, “Let’s get a good, a beautiful picture.”
The Netanyahus stood on opposite sides of Trump, who smiled and gave his trademark thumbs-up to assembled photographers.
Netanyahu’s office separately released a clip from inside the resort of the premier presenting Trump with a picture of 4-year-old hostage Ariel Bibas who was kidnapped by Hamas along with his parents and baby brother from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7.
Netanyahu is heard telling Trump that Ariel’s grandfather asked him to give the former president the picture.
“We’ll get that taken care of,” Trump responded, as they posed for another picture.
Netanyahu then pulled out a blue hat inscribed with the words “Total victory,” — a reference to his stated goal for how he plans to end the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. He has faced criticism from some in the security establishment and the Biden administration, which has argued that the slogan isn’t a realistic strategy in such a brutal war.
The baseball cap already caused an uproar this week after the prime minister was photographed next to it in the meeting room of Wing of Zion, Israel’s so-called Air Force One, en route to Washington. The photo was reportedly removed from official channels following assertions the hat is a commercial venture by a pro-Netanyahu Channel 14 television anchor.
But the premier hasn’t moved away from phrase, using it in his Wednesday speech to US Congress.
Trump and Netanyahu held their more formal sit-down in a poorly lit-dining room, with reporters briefly allowed inside before it started. The two men were joined by several of their aides, as well as Sara. Trump’s wife Melania did not appear to be present.
Trump claimed he has “always had a very good relationship” with Netanyahu.
The Republican candidate also called comments by his expected election rival US Vice President Kamala Harris about the war in Gaza as “disrespectful” to Israel and said he did not know how Jews can vote for her.
“I think her remarks were disrespectful. They weren’t very nice pertaining to Israel. I actually don’t know how a person who’s Jewish can vote for her. But that’s up to them,” Trump said. “But she was certainly disrespectful to Israel, in my opinion.”
Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, insisted Thursday that she would not be “silent” on suffering in Gaza, in comments made shortly after meeting Netanyahu at the White House. Her remarks drew furious Israeli complaints, claiming that they could complicate efforts to reach a deal with the Hamas terror group to free hostages and end the war in Gaza.
However, Harris also stressed pro-Israel points, branding Hamas a “brutal terror organization” that triggered the ongoing war with its October 7 onslaught, and noting that it included “horrific acts of sexual violence.” The vice president made a point of reading out the names of all eight American-Israel hostages still held captive by Hamas — something no other US official has done.
In Florida, Netanyahu said he hoped his US trip would lead to a quicker hostage and ceasefire deal.
“I hope so. But I think time will tell,” he told reporters.
He said he thought there had been movement in efforts to forge a ceasefire because of Israeli military pressure and said he would dispatch a team to talks in Rome.
Trump said: “We’re closer to a third world war right now than at any time since the Second World War. We’ve never been so close because we have incompetent people running our country.
Netanyahu had been trying to seek Friday’s meeting ever since he was invited to address a joint session of US Congress.
Hours before the meeting, an Israeli official revealed that the prime minister had called the Trump on July 4 to wish him a happy US Independence Day, apparently the first time the two had spoken since Trump’s presidency ended in January 2021.
Despite the yearslong silence, the Israeli official told reporters that the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump is “good.”
Netanyahu has been in the United States since Monday. He met separately on Thursday with US President Joe Biden and Harris — the latter being Trump’s likely rival in the November 5 election.
The Trump-Netanyahu meeting in Florida was moved to Friday at the latter’s request. The new date coincides with the 33rd birthday of his eldest son Yair, who currently lives in Miami. Netanyahu and his wife will spend Saturday in Florida, given that Israeli prime ministers don’t traditionally fly over Shabbat.
The premier’s relationship with Trump soured when Netanyahu congratulated Biden for winning the 2020 election, which Trump falsely denies losing.
Trump told Fox News on Thursday that he was pleased by Netanyahu’s praise for him in the premier’s Wednesday address to Congress, but he added that the war against Hamas in Gaza must end soon.
In his speech, Netanyahu listed actions by the Trump administration long-sought by Israeli governments, such as the US officially saying Israel had sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria during a 1967 war; a tougher US policy toward Iran; and Trump declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, breaking with longstanding US policy that Jerusalem’s status should be decided in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
“I appreciated that,” Trump told Fox.
The former US president has previously faulted Netanyahu with failing to avert Hamas’s shock October 7 assault, when thousands of terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
“I want him to finish up and get it done quickly. You gotta get it done quickly, because they are getting decimated with this publicity,” Trump said in Thursday’s interview.
He also said Israel “gotta get your hostages back” and that he believes “many of them, maybe, are dead.”
“Israel is not very good at public relations, I’ll tell you that,” he added.
On July 17 — before Friday’s meeting was announced — the Axios news site reported that Netanyahu’s aides were hopeful that Trump and Netanyahu would mend fences, after Trump reposted Netanyahu’s video condemning the July 13 assassination attempt on the former US president.
Netanyahu and Trump last met at the September 2020 White House signing of the Abraham Accords, in which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel. Trump wrote Netanyahu off, telling Israeli reporter Barak Ravid, “F**k him” in an interview months later.
The former US president has also criticized Netanyahu for what he said was his failure to stop the October 7 Hamas terror assault, and accused him of failing to cooperate with the 2020 assassination of top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, which Trump had ordered.
However, Trump still tried to strike a balance between the Israelis and Palestinians ahead of Friday’s meeting.
Hours after announcing his meeting with Netanyahu, Trump published a letter he had received from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in which the latter expressed his outrage over the assassination attempt on the former president and wished him well. Trump sent the letter back to Abbas with a note thanking him and assuring him that all would be good.
The Times of Israel obtained the letter earlier Tuesday and reached out to the Trump campaign for comment. Shortly afterward, the former president tweeted out the letter on Truth Social, writing that he was looking “even more forward to achieving Peace in the Middle East!”
In interview excerpts released in 2021, Trump said he believed that Abbas “wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu.”
For both men, Friday’s meeting at Trump’s home in the Mar-a-Lago country club in Palm Beach, Florida will highlight for their home audiences depiction of themselves as strong leaders who have gotten big things done on the world stage, and could again.
For Trump, the meeting could cast him as an ally and statesman, as well as sharpen efforts by Republicans to portray themselves as the party most loyal to Israel.
One political gamble for Netanyahu is whether he could get more of the terms he wants in any deal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, and in his much hoped-for closing of a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, if he waits out the Biden administration in hopes that Trump wins.
Agencies contributed to this report.