Netanyahu surprises Trump with Nobel nomination as both leaders talk of evacuating Gazans

WASHINGTON — At a White House dinner on Monday marked by mutual praise and talk of achieving far-reaching change in the Middle East, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented Donald Trump with a letter he had sent to the Norwegian Nobel Committee nominating the US president for a Nobel Peace Prize.

No Oval Office event or press conference was scheduled for Netanyahu’s third White House visit in six months, but journalists were invited to the White House Blue Room for the start of the dinner, attended by both the leaders’ key aides, and Trump and Netanyahu wound up speaking and taking questions for about half an hour. Only the White House press pool was invited into the room, with the Israeli traveling press kept outside. Sara Netanyahu sat at her husband’s side; Melania Trump was not present.

At the dinner, Trump and his Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff revealed that the US would hold talks with Iran on a new nuclear deal in the next week or so, and Witkoff spoke of his hope of achieving a Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal “very quickly.”

Netanyahu, for his part, restated his opposition to a fully sovereign Palestinian state but said Israel would make peace with those Palestinians who do not seek its destruction.

Both men referred to Trump’s vision of relocating Gazans, with Netanyahu saying progress was being made for several countries to take in Gazans who wish to leave the strip.

In his opening remarks, Trump welcomed Netanyahu warmly and said the two have “had a tremendous success together, and I think it will only go on to be even greater success in the future.”

For his part, Netanyahu praised Trump’s “pursuit of peace and security, which you are leading in many lands, but now, especially in the Middle East.”

“Our teams together make an extraordinary combination to meet challenges and seize opportunities,” Netanyahu said, highlighting the US strikes against Iran. “But the president has already realized great opportunities. He forged the Abraham Accords. He’s forging peace as we speak, in one country, in one region, after the other.”

Netanyahu then rose to his feet and surprised Trump with the Nobel Prize nomination letter, handing it to him across the table. “It’s well deserved, and you should get it,”  Netanyahu said.

“This I didn’t know. Wow,” Trump replied, reading the text. “Coming from you in particular, this is very meaningful.”

Trump: Iran ‘requested a meeting’

Two weeks after Trump ordered US planes to bomb three key Iranian nuclear facilities, the president told reporters at the dinner that he was ready to strike again if necessary.

“They want to make peace, and I’m all for it. If that’s not the case, we are ready, willing and able, but I don’t think we’re going to have to,” said Trump.

Witkoff said that the first round of nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran since last month’s 12-day war would be held “in the next week or so.”

Trump said that Iran “wants to talk” after they took a “big drubbing.” He acknowledged that he did not completely see a purpose for talks, given his belief that Tehran’s nuclear program has been destroyed. “But [the Iranians] requested a meeting, and I’m going to go to a meeting, and if we can put something down on paper, that will be fine,” Trump said.

He reiterated his assertion that Iran’s nuclear program was “obliterated.”

Trump indicated that the strike he ordered reminded him of the US dropping atomic bombs on Japan in World War II. “I don’t want to say what it reminded me of, but if you go back a long time ago, it reminded people of a certain other event, and Harry Truman’s picture is now in the [White House] lobby,” he said, referring to the US president behind the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“That stopped a lot of fighting, and this stopped a lot of fighting,” Trump said, while stressing that the US had not resorted to nuclear weapons against Iran. The US had used unprecedentedly large bombs, but “non-nuclear,” he said, “and we want to keep it non-nuclear.”

He asserted that Iran was now in a different mindset, and had gained “a lot of respect” for the US and Israel.

Netanyahu said that the “partnership between Israel and the United States — the partnership between President Trump and me — produced a historic victory” against Iran.

“They were planning to build 20,000 of these things [ballistic missiles] and launch them on a country the size of New Jersey. No country can withstand that. So what do you do when you have two things that are going to kill you? You have to remove them with our combined effort, [and] we did,” Netanyahu said.

“I’d like to believe that Iran would not test our fortitude, because it would be a mistake,” he threatened, adding that regime change is “up to the people of Iran.”

Netanyahu said the US and Israeli strikes against Iran had “changed the face of the Middle East” and created an opportunity to expand the Abraham Accords, a set of normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab and Muslim neighbors.

‘Finally,’ hope for a Gaza peace deal

Witkoff met with Netanyahu earlier on Monday and is slated to fly to Qatar this week to participate in indirect talks between Israel and Hamas.

Invited by Trump to provide an update on the ongoing ceasefire-hostage talks, Witkoff said, “We have an opportunity to finally get a peace deal — Mr. Prime Minister, as we discussed — and I’m hopeful for it very quickly.”

Trump had told reporters on Sunday that there was a “good chance” a deal could be reached “during the week.”

Proximity talks between Israel and Hamas have been ongoing in Doha since Sunday.

Trump was asked whether a security incident that took place several hours earlier in northern Gaza — in which five Israeli soldiers were killed and 14 were injured by a roadside bomb — would impact the ceasefire talks. “I don’t think so,” Trump responded, saying that “they want to meet; they want to have that ceasefire.”

Asked what was holding up a ceasefire, Trump apparently misunderstood or misheard the question and answered regarding Iran, including its missile attack on the US military base in Qatar. Neither he nor Netanyahu mentioned the hostages.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said earlier on Monday that Trump’s “utmost priority” was to end the war in Gaza and return all of the remaining hostages, adding that an “agreeable and appropriate” proposal is on the table after Israel backed it, and urging Hamas to do the same.

Hamas said over the weekend that it responded positively to the offer while submitting three reservations that Netanyahu subsequently asserted were unacceptable.

Trump’s ‘brilliant’ Gaza vision

Referring to Trump’s plan to relocate Gazans, unveiled when Netanyahu visited the White House in February, the prime minister said that Israel and the US were “getting close to finding several countries” to take in Palestinians who would like to leave the war-torn Gaza Strip.

“I think President Trump had a brilliant vision. It’s called free choice. If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave,” Netanyahu said. Gaza “shouldn’t be a prison. It should be an open place.”

The Israeli government has seized on Trump’s Gaza takeover plan, framing it as an opportunity to “encourage the voluntary migration” of Palestinians from the Strip.

“We’re working with the United States very closely [to] find countries that will… give the Palestinians a better future,” Netanyahu said.

Chiming in, Trump said he has had “great cooperation” from “surrounding countries” on the matter. “Something good will happen,” he added.

While some neighboring countries have taken in Palestinians for medical treatment, none have publicly agreed to cooperate with the Trump initiative, not wanting to interfere in what is seen as a land conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — particularly as some of Netanyahu’s coalition partners have been pushing the construction of settlements in Gaza areas cleared of Palestinians.

Israel is sure Trump is serious about encouraging Gazans to emigrate voluntarily, a senior Israeli official said after the dinner. “After tonight, I am [convinced],” said the official. “The plan is alive. What is needed is operational coordination, not only the aims, but how we achieve it. And that is what we discussed. The desire is there,” the official said.

During the dinner, Netanyahu rejected the idea of a full Palestinian state, something he has done repeatedly in the past. “I think Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves, but none of the powers to threaten us,” he said.

“That means that certain powers, like overall security, will always remain in our hands,” he continued. “No one in Israel will agree to anything else, because we don’t commit suicide,” Netanyahu asserted.

“We want life. We cherish life for ourselves, for our neighbors, and I think we can work out a peace between us and the entire Middle East with President Trump’s leadership,” he continued. “By working together, I think we can establish a very, very broad peace that will include all our neighbors.”

He claimed that some people said the Palestinians had a state before the onslaught of October 7, 2023 — “a Hamas state in Gaza. Look what they did with it. They didn’t build it up. They built down into bunkers, into terror tunnels, after which they massacred our people.” He said that “another” Palestinian state would similarly serve as a “platform to destroy Israel.”

He added: “We’ll work out a peace with our Palestinian neighbors — those who don’t want to destroy us. And we’ll work out a peace in which our security, the sovereign power of security, always remains in our hands.”

“Now people will say, ‘It’s not a complete state, it’s not a state’… We don’t care,” he said. “We vowed ‘Never again.’ Never again is now. It’s not going to happen again.”

A channel to Syria

Also, at the dinner, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee praised Trump for having reached out to Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, at a meeting in Riyadh in May. Trump realized that the new Syria “needed a partner” and might pick the wrong one, Huckabee said, indicating that Syria could be a key component in a new set of regional alliances.

Trump is dangling the possibility of an agreement between Israel and Syria as a carrot in exchange for Israel agreeing to end the war in Gaza, the Israel Hayom  daily reported earlier on Monday, citing “sources close to the White House.”

The report claimed Trump sent an envoy to Damascus on Monday to nail down a Syria-Israel agreement with the US as guarantor.

The White House meeting between Netanyahu and Trump came hours after the US announced that it was revoking its “foreign terrorist organization” designation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group led by al-Sharaa and formerly linked to Al-Qaeda that took control of Syria in December 2024.

Asked whether he was comfortable with the quick warming of US ties with al-Sharaa’s government, given Israel’s more cautious public approach, Netanyahu said the weakening of Iran and its proxies in the region presents new opportunities “for stability, for security, and eventually for peace.”

He hailed Trump for opening “up a channel” with the new government in Damascus. He declined to reveal whether Israel is engaged in direct talks with Syria, though National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi told Israel Hayom last month that “There is direct daily dialogue at all levels between Israel and the regime in Syria” and that the two sides are discussing the possibility of a peace deal.

While Israel initially viewed al-Sharaa with suspicion, it later expressed interest in striking normalization agreements with Syria and neighboring Lebanon. It has insisted that the strategic Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed — would remain part of Israel under any peace accord.

On Friday, Syria said it was willing to cooperate with the United States to reimplement a 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel.

The Assad regime was toppled after more than 13 years of civil war by a rebel offensive led by al-Sharaa.

Trump said that he decided to lift US sanctions against Syria at the request of many countries, “including Bibi.”

No worries about a New York arrest

Netanyahu said he still plans to travel to New York City, despite the US Democratic Party’s nominee for mayor of the city Zohran Mamdani pledging to arrest the Israeli premier, given the International Criminal Court arrest warrant against him.

Asked if he was worried about Mamdani’s pledge, Netanyahu told reporters that he was “not concerned about that.”

“I’ll get him out,” Trump quipped, apparently referring to the possibility of a Netanyahu arrest.

Asked whether that meant he would be in New York next year, Netanyahu responded that he would come with Trump. Netanyahu would likely visit before next year to speak at the UN General Assembly’s annual high-level meeting of world leaders, which takes place annually in September.

The premier also noted that while Mamdani has won the Democratic primary, the general election isn’t until November.

Weighing in on the matter, Trump called Mamdani a “communist” who has “said some real bad things about Jewish people” — an apparent reference to the mayoral candidate’s intense criticism of Israel and refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.”

“He’s going through a little bit of a honeymoon right now, [and] he might [win], but it all comes through the White House. He needs the money through the White House… He’s going to behave… He better behave, otherwise he’s going to have big problems,” Trump said.

Continuing his visit, Netanyahu is scheduled to meet US Vice President J.D. Vance at 9:15 a.m. local time on Tuesday at the Blair House. He will then meet US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on Capitol Hill, before returning to the Blair House for more meetings.

At 4 p.m., Netanyahu will head to the Senate for meetings with Majority Leader John Thune, Democratic Senator John Fetterman, and other senators.