Netanyahu insists ties with Trump are ‘excellent’ amid reports of growing rift

US Middle East envoy Witkoff claims media exaggerating tensions between leaders; Netanyahu’s inner circle said to harshly criticize Trump administration

US President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he leaves the West Wing of the White House, April 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Mark Schiefelbein)
US President Donald Trump, left, shakes hands with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he leaves the West Wing of the White House, April 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Mark Schiefelbein)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rejected reports of widening gaps between him and US President Donald Trump, and said that his relationship with the president was “excellent” in a video update on his X account.

The reports came ahead of Trump’s trip to the Middle East this week, in which the US president will skip Israel but will stop in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, leading government critics to warn Israel was being left out of Washington’s regional diplomatic initiatives.

“What can I say — it’s not Trump saying it and it’s not me saying it,” Netanyahu said, when asked about sources in the media claiming there is growing tension between Washington and Jerusalem amid the war in Gaza and the US-Iran nuclear talks.

“It was his [Trump’s] spokesperson at the White House who said: ‘What is this nonsense?’” Netanyahu continued, referring to recent comments from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “She said the relationship is excellent, and I’m telling you — the relationship is excellent.”

“These spins — most of them are born here [in Israel.] They’re born in a certain media outlet that’s trying to promote a certain candidate. And in order to promote him, they need to say: ‘Trump and Netanyahu are no longer,’” the premier claimed.

He did not name the media outlet.

“I speak to him [Trump] from time to time. I won’t say every couple of days, but every two or three weeks, I talk to him. My people are in the White House — including just two to three days ago, they were there…We are currently blessed with a president and an administration that is very, very friendly. And we’re trying to coordinate both the big things as well as the small things,” concluded Netanyahu, referring to a visit last week to the White House by Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer.

US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff added his voice to the growing chorus of officials denying any tensions between the two leaders, in an interview with the right-wing Breitbart news site conducted last week and published Sunday evening.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli people are a staunch ally of the United States, and it goes back the other way,” said Witkoff. “I’ve been at multiple meetings with the president and the prime minister—they’re friendly. They’re good friends, in fact.”

He said this does not mean they see eye-to-eye “on absolutely everything,” but that the media “hears about a small disagreement… then conflates that into some large article about massive issues that they have.”

US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff speaks at an Israeli Embassy in Washington event marking Independence Day, May 5, 2025 (Israeli Embassy in Washington)

“Israel is a great partner for the United States, strategically, economically. We think very much alike, we have very similar objectives,” the US envoy said. “They don’t want to see a weaponized nuclear state in the state of Iran. And so, I don’t think there’s much daylight between how they think and how we think from a foreign policy perspective.”

Channel 12 reported Sunday that Witkoff recently told hostages’ families that he disagrees with Israel’s approach to the war in the Strip, and believes that Israel is pointlessly extending the war when reaching a new ceasefire and hostage release deal is the correct next step to take.

Israel is planning to launch a major military offensive against Hamas in Gaza if no hostage deal is reached with the terror group by the end of Trump’s visit to the region.

Channel 12 cited the families as saying they had not heard this kind of criticism of Israeli government policy from Witkoff in the past.

Former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who served under the first Trump administration, also asserted in an X post, “There is NO RIFT between President Trump and PM Netanyahu. There are those in both the US and Israel who would like to see such a rift, and they are feeding false accounts to the media to achieve just that. But it’s all fake.”

Current US Ambassador Mike Huckabee tried to quell the rumors of tensions in interviews with Israeli networks Saturday, asserting that the US president was not snubbing Israel by skipping the Jewish state during his upcoming visit.

Jerusalem is reportedly unhappy with the ongoing US-Iran talks, which are said to be developing into a largely similar framework to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, which was signed by then-US president Barack Obama and was panned at the time by Netanyahu as disastrous for Israel.

Under the terms being discussed, according to reports, Iran would limit stockpile size and centrifuge types, and dilute, export, or seal its 60 percent uranium stock under unprecedented International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scrutiny, in exchange for substantial sanctions relief.

This approach has not aligned with Netanyahu’s longtime position, which is that Israel will not allow Iran to attain nuclear weapons and is opposed to any talks that don’t lead Iran to agree to a “Libya-style agreement,” under which Tehran’s entire nuclear program — both military and civilian — would be dismantled completely.

In addition, Israel had not been made aware in advance of a recent deal signed between the US and the Houthi rebels in Yemen regarding a cessation of US bombing if the Iran-backed rebels stop firing on US shipping, which notably left the door open for Houthi strikes on Israel to go unabated.

Security forces at the site where a missile fired from Yemen hit an area of Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, on May 4, 2025.(Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

That deal was announced by Trump two days after a Houthi missile impacted the grounds of Ben Gurion Airport, a few hundred yards from the main control tower, lightly injuring several people and prompting most foreign airlines to halt flights to Israel.

Israel’s Channel 13 reported Sunday evening that people in Netanyahu’s inner circle have expressed unusually harsh criticism toward the Trump administration in recent weeks.

“There’s chaos in the Trump administration — the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing,” said a senior figure close to the premier, according to the report.

“It’s not even clear if this has anything to do with us. Everything operates according to the president’s whims. Sometimes that works in our favor, and sometimes it doesn’t,” the source said.

The premier’s office also expressed disappointment in the White House through Dermer, during a meeting last Thursday between the top Netanyahu adviser and Trump, the report added.

In the US, Fox News also reported on the rift, citing analysts as saying Netanyahu stood as a “roadblock” to Trump’s diplomatic initiatives in the region, adding that Israel was not part of securing the expected release of US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander, who was kidnapped during the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught that started the war in Gaza.

Officials told The Times of Israel the move was a goodwill gesture by Hamas ahead of Trump’s Middle East visit, hoping that he will coax Israel to sign a deal freeing the remaining hostages in exchange for an end to the war.

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