What’s on the agenda for the Trump-Netanyahu meeting?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Sunday, becoming the first foreign leader to visit U.S. President Donald Trump since his return to the White House. The visit is highly anticipated, marking a new chapter in the relationship between the two countries.

Trump and his Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff, are being credited with brokering the Gaza ceasefire agreement. It's revealed that the deal has been on the table since December 2023, and they finalized it by pressuring Netanyahu. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Witkoff and presidential advisors on Monday, followed by a visit to the Oval Office on Tuesday. He is expected to stay in Washington for a full week, returning to Israel on Saturday.

The visit comes as the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement is being implemented, with weekly prisoner exchanges. As planned, by March 1st, 33 Israelis will be released from Gaza in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinians from Israeli prisons, many of whom were never charged with a crime. Netanyahu’s government has long maintained that Israeli forces have the right to “resume fighting” after Hamas releases all hostages taken since the October 7, 2023, attacks.

Netanyahu's political survival in Israel largely depends on this, despite the fact that over 47,000 people have died in Gaza, the vast majority of whom are women and children. So, is Netanyahu’s highly publicized visit a reward for securing the Gaza ceasefire? Dylan Williams, the Vice President for Government Affairs at the Center for International Policy (CIP), said, “Standing next to one of the most powerful people in the world demonstrates that he hasn’t lost international legitimacy.” He added, “That being said, I think there’s still a huge amount of Americans, and certainly people around the world, who are very unhappy that the Israeli government doesn’t seem to be held accountable for its conduct in the Gaza war.”

Even before the Gaza war, Netanyahu was already the target of massive protests in Israel due to a judicial crisis triggered by his attempts to push through judicial reforms. These reforms were widely seen as a plot to weaken the country’s judiciary. He also faces a corruption trial that began last month, which could lead to a 10-year prison sentence if convicted. If a lasting peace in Gaza is achieved, it is widely believed that Netanyahu will face accountability within Israel for failing to prevent the October 7th attacks. Families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have condemned him for rejecting multiple prisoner swap proposals from Hamas for over a year. Furthermore, Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant are also subject to arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.

“The president is very clear that the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East is Netanyahu,” said Bishara Bahbah, head of the Arab Americans for Trump (AAFT) organization. Although Trump has a close relationship with Netanyahu, mainly through his son-in-law Jared Kushner, he has publicly mocked the Israeli Prime Minister on several occasions. Trump reportedly said “fuck him” because Netanyahu embraced Joe Biden after the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Trump also revealed that Netanyahu pushed the U.S. to assassinate a senior Iranian commander in January 2020, only to then back out of the operation but still take credit, which infuriated him. Bahbah added that Trump may want the second phase of the ceasefire to go smoothly, as he has promised a “lasting peace in the Middle East.”

However, Netanyahu is not arriving in Washington empty-handed. Williams stated, “You can expect that there’s going to be some new weapons sales, new systems, maybe things that Israel has been wanting. That will improve the bilateral relationship to some degree.” According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Monday afternoon, the Trump administration is “preparing” to sell $1 billion worth of weapons to Israel, including bombs and armored bulldozers, among other military hardware. The administration has requested congressional leaders to approve the transfer. In the two weeks since Trump took office, he has already lifted the suspension on 2,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs to Israel and rescinded the Biden administration's sanctions on some extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have burned Palestinian homes. “These are all small potatoes in my opinion,” Bahbah said.

Bahbah added that what Trump will give Netanyahu “is not annexation of the West Bank, and it’s not the forced or voluntary expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. It’s: ‘Do you want to live in peace and security? Do you want a Jewish state? The time is now.’ So, [Trump] will deliver lasting peace for Israel and the neighboring Arab countries.” However, observers have raised concerns about Trump's insistence that Egypt and Jordan take in Palestinians and his suggestions to “clean up” Gaza. Later this month, King Abdullah II of Jordan is invited to visit the White House, leading many to speculate that Trump will further pressure the monarch to take in Palestinians. As with previous administrations, the Trump team is focused on normalizing relations between Israel and Arab countries, as the so-called Abraham Accords were launched during Trump's first term in 2020. Opening up Israeli-Saudi diplomacy remains the ultimate goal.

“Trump doesn’t want to be on the hook for managing a hot war,” Williams said. “He, or at least Witkoff, understands that if the ceasefire agreement doesn’t hold, then their plans to further normalize relations between Israel and Arab countries are unlikely to go anywhere.” He added, “Donald Trump sees himself as the ultimate dealmaker, and he sees some wins that can be had in this region.”

Historically, Netanyahu's visits to the U.S. have focused largely on increasing economic and military pressure on Tehran, which Tel Aviv sees as the primary instigator of anti-Israeli violence (or what Iranian-backed groups see as resistance) in the region. This visit is no exception, except that Trump seems to be taking a different approach in his second term. The president has recently made some key personnel appointments and fired other diplomats that seem to suggest he is seeking some kind of engagement track that could lead to a deal with Iran. Trump fired his former Iran envoy Brian Hook, who led the “maximum pressure” campaign and was a known hawk within government circles. Trump also withdrew security personnel assigned to his former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Earlier that day, he called Bolton a “warmonger” who helped “blow up the Middle East.”

Netanyahu is likely to push among congressional Republicans—most of whom take a hardline stance on Iran—that the U.S. should participate in an Israeli missile attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. “I think Netanyahu is actually going to try to prevent Trump from opening up a diplomatic door to Iran,” Williams stated. “Neoconservatives and people who have wanted the U.S. to push for regime change in Iran for decades are freaking out over some of the things the president has said and the personnel choices he’s made,” he said. “We’re seeing him publicly disparage and humiliate people who were associated with his first administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ policy, and seeing him appoint people who, while very conservative, have in the past been supportive of diplomacy with Iran.”

The diplomatic engagement between long-time rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran since a China-brokered agreement in 2023 is also notable. While the Saudi kingdom has made it clear that normalizing relations with Israel is contingent on a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, a war with Iran directly involving Israel and the U.S. could be detrimental to that goal, which is already very unpopular in the Arab world. “A lasting peace in the Middle East, that satisfies all parties… that’s what the president promised us Arab Americans and Muslim Americans during his campaign,” Bahbah said. “I would like to remind the president that he has a mandate from us Americans,” he added. “There’s an election next year that’s going to determine who controls both houses of Congress, and we’re going to be there… our votes are still needed.”