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Donald Trump used a White House dinner for Benjamin Netanyahu to toast the “tremendous success” of their relationship despite the lack of tangible progress on permanent peace deals with Iran or Hamas.
The Israeli prime minister praised Trump for “forging peace, as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other”, and also claimed the pair were making progress on a controversial plan to move Palestinians out of Gaza.
The reunion following their aerial assaults against Tehran papered over some of the tensions that flared between the two leaders in the run-up and aftermath of the Iran strikes, with the Israeli premier handing Trump a letter proposing him for the Nobel Peace Prize — an accolade the president covets.
“It’s nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved, and you should get it,” Netanyahu told Trump. “It’s a great honour,” Trump replied.
But Trump and Netanyahu did not reach any big breakthroughs on the questions surrounding the future of the Middle East, including near-term prospects for a ceasefire in Gaza, postwar plans for the enclave and negotiations for a longer-term pact with Iran.
Trump has been pushing Netanyahu with increasing urgency for a truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, which he hoped to clinch “this week”. When asked about a possible deal, the US president said the negotiations were going well. “I don’t think there’s a hold-up,” he said.
He then quickly turned back to discussing Iran and its limited retaliation against the US strikes. “In the end, missiles were shot and every single missile was shot out of the air,” Trump said.
Hamas said on Friday that it had delivered a “positive” response to a 60-day ceasefire proposal involving the release of Israeli hostages and the beginning of talks on a permanent end to the conflict.
Netanyahu on Sunday dispatched negotiators to Doha to discuss the US-brokered deal but said changes requested by Hamas were unacceptable. Trump is sending Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to join the talks.
Trump and Netanyahu also both said the US and Israel were close to finding other countries to resettle Palestinians displaced from Gaza, after the US president earlier this year proposed emptying the strip of its entire Palestinian population — an idea denounced by the UN and rights groups as tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
“I think we’re getting close to finding several countries,” Netanyahu said. “If people want to stay, they can stay, but if they want to leave, they should be able to leave.”
“We’ve had great co-operation from countries surrounding Israel,” Trump added, without naming the countries.
Earlier on Monday, Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said he had told the Israeli military to prepare a plan for moving more half a million Gazans — and eventually the Palestinian enclave’s entire civilian population of more than 2mn people — into a so-called “humanitarian city” in the ruins of Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Once inside the area, which would be secured by the Israeli military, people would not be allowed to leave, Katz told a briefing for local media, reiterating that he wanted Palestinians to “voluntarily emigrate” from Gaza.
US and Israeli officials have previously approached countries in east Africa about taking Palestinians from Gaza.
Asked whether there could be a “two-state solution” with Palestine as an independent country alongside Israel, Trump departed from traditional US support for this position. “I don’t know,” he said, punting the question to Netanyahu.
“I think Palestinians should have all the powers the government has, but none of the power should threaten us,” Netanyahu said.
The future of Tehran’s nuclear programme also remained unresolved. “We have scheduled Iran talks,” Trump told reporters. Witkoff said there would be a meeting “in the next week or so”.
The US president added that he would be keen to give Iran sanctions relief so it can start reassembling its economy. “They are very biting sanctions. And I would love to be able to, at the right time, to take those sanctions off, give them a chance at rebuilding,” Trump said.
