Israel’s Netanyahu to Meet Trump in Washington on Feb. 4 Amid Gaza Ceasefire
US President Donald Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talk in the midst of a joint news conference in the White House in Washington, US, Jan. 28, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with US President Donald Trump at the White House on Feb. 4, the two governments said on Tuesday.
The meeting is set to take place amid a fragile six-week ceasefire that has brought a temporary pause to 15 months of fighting between Israel and Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday that he wants Egypt to take in Palestinians from Gaza, where much of the population has been displaced by Israel’s military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
“I wish he would take some. We help them a lot, and I’m sure he can help us,” Trump said of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whom he called a “friend.”
“I’d like to get them living in an area where they can live without disruption and revolution and violence,” Trump said of Palestinians in Gaza.
Trump‘s comments come after he floated at the weekend the idea that Egypt and Jordan, which border Israel and the Palestinian territories to the south and east, respectively, should take in Palestinians from Gaza because “almost everything is demolished and people are dying there.”
The new US president said he made the request in a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah on Saturday.
Jordan is already home to several million Palestinians, while tens of thousands live in Egypt. Both countries pushed back over the weekend after Trump said they should take in Palestinians from Gaza.
The suggestion was also rejected by Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that runs Gaza, and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank.
Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab countries oppose removing Palestinians from Gaza, in part because it is land that Palestinians want as part of a future Palestinian state.
Hamas started the Gaza war with its invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages during their onslaught. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in Gaza.
The fighting has currently paused amid a fragile ceasefire.
Under the terms of the ceasefire, agreed this month with Egyptian and Qatari mediation and US support, 33 hostages are due to be released during a six-week ceasefire, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of them serving life sentences in Israeli jails for involvement in terrorist activities. Seven hostages and 290 prisoners have so far been exchanged.
Displaced Palestinians began returning to their homes in Gaza City this week after 15 months of fighting.
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