President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attend a press conference at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem, May 22, 2017. Photo by Marc Israel Sellem/POOL.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to meet former U.S. President Donald Trump at the latter’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Friday.
“Looking forward to welcoming Bibi Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said earlier this week. “During my first term, we had peace and stability in the region, even signing the historic Abraham Accords, and we will have it again.”
Ahead of their meeting, an Israeli official revealed that Netanyahu called Trump on July 4 in what was reportedly their first conversation since January 2021.
Trump has said he felt slighted when the Israeli leader congratulated Joe Biden for winning the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
On Wednesday, Trump, who is the Republican nominee for his old job, declined to commit to changing Biden’s policy of slow-walking weapon shipments to Israel.
Asked on Fox News morning program “Fox and Friends” if he would, as president, fast-track arms transfers to the Jewish state, Trump dodged the question, hours after Netanyahu made that request during an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
Instead, he focused on Israel finishing the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “I would make sure that it gets over with fast. You have to end this fast,” he said.
“They gotta get this done fast because the world is not taking lightly to it,” added Trump, while again claiming that Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre “would’ve never happened” if he were president.
On Tuesday, Trump shared on his Truth Social media platform a letter that he received from Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas condemning the assassination attempt against the former U.S. president.
The letter was sent from Ramallah on July 14, the day after Trump was shot in the ear while speaking on stage at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Abbas wrote that “acts of violence must not have a place in a world of law and order. Respect for the other with tolerance and valuing of human life is what must prevail.”
Abbas has been repeatedly criticized for promoting violence through the P.A.’s “pay-to-slay” policy of financially compensating terrorists and the families of terrorists who murder or attempt to murder Israelis.
His Fatah faction, which rules parts of Judea and Samaria, signed a unity agreement on Tuesday that includes Hamas.
Trump responded to Abbas with a signed handwritten note on the letter: “So nice. Thank you. Everything will be good. Best wishes.”
On Friday, the Israeli official described Trump’s relationship with Netanyahu as “good.”
Source: JNS
