TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday he will discuss “victory over Hamas,” countering Iran and expanding diplomatic relations with Arab countries in his meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Tuesday’s meeting at the White House will be Trump’s first with a foreign leader since returning to office. It comes as U.S. and Arab mediators begin the daunting work of brokering the next phase of a ceasefire agreement to wind down the 15-month war in Gaza.
Hamas, which has reasserted control over Gaza since the ceasefire began last month, has said it will not release hostages in the second phase without an end to the war and Israeli forces’ full withdrawal.
Netanyahu is under mounting pressure from far-right governing partners to resume the war after the first phase ends in early March. He has said Israel is committed to victory over Hamas and the return of all hostages captured in the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that triggered the war.
Trump has been a staunch supporter of Israel, but has also pledged to end wars in the Middle East and took credit for helping to broker the ceasefire agreement. The deal has led to the release of 18 hostages as well as hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
An Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in central Gaza wounded five people Sunday, according to Al-Awda Hospital. Israel’s military said it fired on the vehicle because it was bypassing a checkpoint while heading north in violation of the ceasefire agreement.
Ahead of his departure, Netanyahu said he and Trump would discuss “victory over Hamas, achieving the release of all our hostages and dealing with the Iranian terror axis in all its components,” referring to Iran’s alliance of terrorist groups across the region, including Hamas.
He said they could “strengthen security, broaden the circle of peace and achieve a remarkable era of peace through strength.”
Under the ceasefire’s first phase, Hamas is to release 33 hostages, eight of whom Hamas says are dead, in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. Israeli forces have pulled back from most areas and allowed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to northern Gaza while aid flows in.
Negotiations on the second phase, which would end the war and see the remaining 60 or so hostages returned, are set to begin Monday with mediators the U.S., Qatar and Egypt.
“We started already engaging with the parties in order to define the agenda and to start engaging in those discussions,” Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said Sunday, adding that “we hope that we start to see some movement in the next few days.”
Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, joined the yearlong ceasefire negotiations last month and helped push the agreement over the finish line. He met with Netanyahu in Israel last week and they were expected to formally begin talks on the second phase on Monday.
Trump, who brokered normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab countries in his first term, is believed to be seeking a wider agreement in which Israel would forge ties with Saudi Arabia.
But the kingdom has said it would only agree to such a deal if the war ends and there is a credible pathway to a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
On Sunday, Jordan said its king had been invited to meet with Trump at the White House on Feb. 11. Jordan also supports Palestinian statehood and has rejected Trump’s suggestion to relocate Palestinians from Gaza there and to Egypt.
Netanyahu’s government is opposed to Palestinian statehood, and a key partner, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has threatened to leave the governing coalition if the war is not resumed next month. That would raise the likelihood of early elections in which Netanyahu could be voted out.
Relatives of hostages and many other Israelis are impatient. “The suffering that the families are going through as this drags on is inhuman,” the brother of newly released hostage Ofer Kalderon, Nissan Kalderon, said Sunday.