Report: US told Netanyahu strike on Hamas general violated ceasefire, White House fed up with PM

The White House sent a stiff rebuke to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Israeli strike on senior Hamas commander Ra’ad Sa’ad on Saturday, two US officials tell Axios.

“The White House message to Netanyahu was, ‘If you want to ruin your reputation and show that you don’t abide by agreements, be our guest, but we won’t allow you to ruin President Trump’s reputation after he brokered the deal in Gaza,'” says one of the US officials.

The US told Netanyahu that Israel violated the ceasefire with the strike, according to the report.

The officials tell the US outlet that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, top envoy Steve Witkoff, and Middle East adviser Jared Kushner are fed up with Netanyahu. “Steve and Jared are pissed by Israeli inflexibility around several Gaza-related issues,” says one of the Americans.

The allegations come two weeks before Netanyahu and Trump are scheduled to meet at the president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

The Prime Minister’s Office does not respond to requests for comment.

An Israeli official tells Axios that the White House is indeed displeased, but sent a relatively restrained message that “certain Arab countries” saw the assassination as a violation of the ceasefire. The officials adds that it was Hamas that violated the ceasefire by carrying out attacks on soldiers and trying to smuggle weapons into Gaza.

The White House feels that Israel is unnecessarily angering potential Arab partners and won’t move on from the war in Gaza to a new era of peace-making.

“Netanyahu has turned over the last two years into a global pariah. He should ask himself why [Egyptian leader Abdel-Fattah] el-Sissi refuses to meet him and why five years after the Abraham Accords he still hasn’t been invited to visit the UAE,” says a US official. “The Trump administration is doing a lot of hard work to fix it. But if Netanyahu doesn’t want to take the steps that are needed to de-escalate, we are not going to waste our time on trying to expand the Abraham Accords.”

The White House is also upset over settler violence in the West Bank, according to a senior US official. “The US doesn’t ask Netanyahu to compromise Israel’s security. We ask him not [to] take steps that are perceived in the Arab world as provocations,” says the official.