{"id":195031,"date":"2025-12-30T02:32:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T02:32:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/netanyahu-to-meet-trump-in-us-amid-fears-of-israeli-regional-offensives-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-12-30T02:32:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T02:32:21","slug":"netanyahu-to-meet-trump-in-us-amid-fears-of-israeli-regional-offensives-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/netanyahu-to-meet-trump-in-us-amid-fears-of-israeli-regional-offensives-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Netanyahu to meet Trump in US amid fears of Israeli regional offensives – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel\u2019s PM travels to Mar-a-Lago as US administration reported to be running out of patience over Gaza ceasefire
Benjamin Netanyahu met Donald Trump at the US president\u2019s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday amid growing fears Israel could launch new offensives against regional enemies, potentially plunging the Middle East further into instability.
High on the agenda will be the ceasefire in Gaza, which in October halted the devastating two-year-long war. Though the terms agreed for an initial phase have been largely completed, with Israel\u2019s forces pulling back to new positions and Hamas releasing all living and all but one of the dead hostages, immense challenges face the implementation of the second phase of the president\u2019s 20-point plan.
After warmly greeting Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters that he hopes to reach phase two of the Gaza<\/a> plan \u201cvery quickly\u201d but warned \u201cthere has to be a disarming of Hama\u201d. The president also lied by claiming that \u201cjust about\u201d every hostage was released because of him and his team, whereas \u201cnone\u201d was released during the Joe Biden administration.
There are fears Israel will launch new offensives against Hezbollah<\/a> in Lebanon, breaking a ceasefire established more than a year ago, or against Iran, which it accuses of accelerating the manufacture of ballistic missiles in recent months.
Asked about the prospect of a fresh attack on Iran<\/a>, Trump said: \u201cI hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we\u2019re going to have to knock them down \u2013 we\u2019ll knock them down, we\u2019ll knock the hell out of them. But hopefully that\u2019s not happening. I heard Iran wants to make a deal. If they want to make a deal, that\u2019s much smarter. You know, they could have made a deal the last time, before we did a big attack on them.\u201d
The Israeli prime minister is making his fifth visit to see Trump in the US this year. The leaders lavished praise on each other, signalling a desire to move past recent friction between the two countries. Netanyahu said: \u201cWe\u2019ve never had a friend like President Trump in the White House. It\u2019s not even close.\u201d
Trump said Netanyahu had done a \u201cphenomenal job\u201d and \u201cIsrael wouldn\u2019t exist without him\u201d. He also claimed he had spoken to the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, who told him that a pardon for Netanyahu in his long-running corruption trial was \u201con its way\u201d. Trump said: \u201cHe\u2019s a wartime prime minister who\u2019s a hero. How do you not give a pardon?\u201d
Gershon Baskin, the co-head of the peace-building commission at the Alliance for Two States, who has taken part in back-channel negotiations with Hamas, said the timing of Netanyahu\u2019s trip was \u201cvery significant\u201d for Gaza.
\u201cPhase 1 is basically over, there\u2019s one remaining Israeli deceased hostage which [Hamas] are having difficulty finding,\u201d he said.
Both sides accuse each other of ceasefire violations. Hamas has failed explicitly to commit to disarmament and has had considerable success in imposing its authority in the parts of Gaza where almost all the population is concentrated. Israel appears reluctant to withdraw from the 53% of Gaza it now controls or to allow free passage of aid into the territory.
\u201cPhase 2 has to begin \u2026 and I think the Americans realise that it\u2019s late because Hamas has had too much time to re-establish its presence and this is certainly not a situation that the Americans want to leave in place,\u201d Baskin said.
More than 70,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, died in Gaza during the war and almost all the territory\u2019s 2.3 million population was displaced. About 400 Palestinians have died<\/a> in Gaza since the October ceasefire, and huge numbers continue to live in conditions of acute hardship.
In recent weeks, heavy rain and cold temperatures have compounded the suffering in Gaza, where most housing and infrastructure have been badly damaged or razed.
The war was triggered by a surprise attack by Hamas in southern Israel in 2023, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 others abducted.
Under the next stages of Trump\u2019s plan, an interim authority made up of nonaligned Palestinian technocrats is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas and an international stabilisation force (ISF) of thousands of troops is to be deployed.
Hamas\u2019s armed wing reiterated on Monday that it would not surrender its weapons.
\u201cOur people are defending themselves and will not give up their weapons as long as the occupation remains,\u201d the new spokesperson for the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who has adopted the name of his late predecessor Abu Obeida, said in a video statement.
US officials have suggested the composition of the new authority could be announced in January.
On Friday, the US news outlet Axios<\/a> reported senior Trump officials were growing frustrated \u201cas Netanyahu has taken steps to undermine the fragile ceasefire and stall the peace process\u201d. Analysts in Israel and overseas agree.
\u201cThere are more and more signs that the American administration is getting frustrated with Netanyahu,\u201d said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East expert at the London-based thinktank Chatham House.
\u201cThe question is what it\u2019s going to do about it, because phase 2 is right now going nowhere,\u201d Mekelberg added.
For Netanyahu, a priority will be convincing Trump to allow Israel to act to prevent Iran from repairing the damage inflicted on its nuclear programme in its short war with Israel and the US this summer, or building its ballistic missile capabilities.
The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said on Saturday that his country was in a full-scale war with the US, Israel and Europe. He added that the conflict was \u201cmore complicated and more difficult\u201d than the Iran-Iraq war, which left more than 1 million casualties on both sides.
Meanwhile, efforts to secure a security agreement between Israel and Syria have failed to make significant progress and will also be on the agenda at Mar-a-Lago, local media in Israel said. Israeli officials have also called for more effective efforts to disarm Hezbollah in accordance with the 2024 ceasefire in Lebanon<\/a>.
Standing alongside Netanyahu on Monday, Trump commented: \u201cThe new president of Syria<\/a> is working very hard to do a good job, he really is\u2026 You\u2019re not going to get a choir boy to lead Syria \u2026 So, I hope they\u2019re going to get along.\u201d
Netanyahu faces an election within 10 months, and the looming polls will influence his agenda, Mekelberg said. \u201cEverything is connected to [his] staying in power,\u201d he said.
Polls show Netanyahu\u2019s current coalition <\/a>would struggle to form a government if elections were held now, with many voters angry over the failures that led to the Hamas raid of 2023, moves to continue the exemption of most ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from compulsory military service in Israel and a series of scandals among other issues.
A close relationship with Trump would reinforce Netanyahu\u2019s appeal among undecided voters and his base, and this suggests any public disagreement between the two leaders is extremely unlikely, analysts said.
Netanyahu is expected to seek to convince Trump of the need for Israel, which relies on the US for many of its defence needs, to maintain a military technological edge over potential regional enemies. Many Israeli officials were shaken when Trump said this year that he would allow the sale of F-35 fighter planes to Saudi Arabia, which he described as a \u201cgreat ally\u201d<\/a>. The state-of-the-art stealth aircraft was key to Israel\u2019s successes against Iran in this summer\u2019s war.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Israel\u2019s PM travels to Mar-a-Lago as US administration reported to be running out of patience over Gaza ceasefireBenjamin Netanyahu met Donald Trump at the US president\u2019s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Monday amid growing fears Israel could launch new offensives against regional enemies, potentially plunging the Middle East further into instability.High on the agenda will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-195031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}