Netanyahu to brief cabinet on talks with Trump

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will brief cabinet ministers Sunday on his talks last week with US President Donald Trump.

The official schedule for Sunday’s cabinet meeting was unusually brief with only one item on the agenda: “The prime minister’s trip to the United States of America.”

Netanyahu is expected to be welcomed warmly by ministers who last week urged him to reject the notion of a two-state solution in his meetings with Trump and have since celebrated the president’s statements suggesting the US is no longer committed to a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Appearing alongside Netanyahu before their meeting, Trump said Wednesday that he believed a peace deal was possible, but said he was not going to tell Israelis or Palestinians how to reach it.

“I’m looking at two state and one state, and I like the one that both parties like,” Trump said, showing receptiveness to Netanyahu’s call for a regional initiative that relied on Israel’s improving relationships with Arab countries.

“The United States will encourage a peace, and really a great peace deal,” said Trump, and added that the matter was “important to me personally.”

Netanyahu did not explicitly renounce his own commitment to a two-state solution, arguing that his position “hasn’t changed” since his seminal 2009 speech on the matter. However, he also avoided explicitly mentioning Palestinian statehood.

The US envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has since said the US “absolutely” backs a two-state solution.

Hawkish ministers immediately hailed the statements as representing a dramatic change in the longstanding US commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The Palestinian flag was today lowered from the mast and replaced with the Israeli flag,” said Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, who has been pushing for Israel to annex a large part of the West Bank.

In the first statement from any Israeli politician following the press conference, Bennett congratulated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his leadership and courage in “fortifying Israel’s security and sovereignty. Now we must look ahead and shape a new strategic approach in light of the new reality.”

Other ministers, including from Netanyahu’s Likud party, also hailed a new era.

But while they omitted criticism from their public comments, ministers are likely to bring up Sunday Trump’s request from Netanyahu to “hold back on settlements for a little bit.”

In a briefing after his meeting with Trump, Netanyahu indicated a willingness to consider the US president’s call to rein in settlement construction. “I said it before, and I will repeat it here again: I don’t want to annex close to 2.5 millions Palestinians to Israel. I do not want them to be our subjects,” he told Israeli and international reporters shortly after he left the White House.

At the same time, Netanyahu revealed that he asked the president to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1981. He refused to disclose how Trump and his aides responded, but said they did not appear surprised.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.