President Donald Trump has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with him at the White House next week, making the Israeli leader the first such guest in the second Trump administration.
The Israeli prime minister’s office released a statement:
US President Donald Trump has invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a meeting in the White House on Tuesday, 4 February 2025.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is the first foreign leader to be invited to the White House during US President Trump’s second term.
Israel’s Ynet (translated by Google) added: In the official invitation, Trump wrote: ‘I look forward to discussing with you how to bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to confront our common enemies.'”
Major topics are anticipated to be the ongoing implementation of the hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas; the future of Lebanon; the threat of a nuclear Iran; and Trump’s suggestion that Palestinians be encouraged to leave Gaza for other Arab countries, a proposal that was previously taboo but has generated a great deal of interest as well as criticism.
Netanyahu and Trump had a good relationship in Trump’s first term, though also, briefly, a rocky one after Netanyahu congratulated President Joe Biden on his apparent win in 2020. The two leaders mended fences in 2024 at Mar-a-Lago.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
