Ahead of Netanyahu-Trump meet, official says they spoke July 4 for 1st time in years
Disclosure comes hours before leaders sit down for first time since 2020 Abraham Accords signing; Trump was infuriated by Netanyahu not buying into his election fraud falsehood
Hours before Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with Donald Trump, an Israeli official revealed Friday that the prime minister had called the former US president 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 Vice President Kamala Harris — the latter being Trump’s likely rival in the November 5 election.
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.
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 their depiction of themselves as strong leaders who have gotten big things done on the world stage and can 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.
AP contributed to this report.
