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Netanyahu meets Trump
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington as protests and political pressure surrounded the visit, with the meeting described by the White House as “positive and constructive.”
In a video released after the Oval Office meeting, Netanyahu said he had “the best conversations I’ve ever had with a United States president, our friend Donald Trump.”
The visit came as Netanyahu’s trip followed the death of U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, and Middle East Eye quoted Aaron David Miller saying: “This visit would not have happened without Lindsey Graham’s death.”
The same Middle East Eye report said Netanyahu appeared upset by the “abundance of American meetings with the Arabs,” while it framed the closed-door meeting as part of a broader effort to keep U.S. support for Israel at a moment of regional complexity.
Protests and accusations
Outside the diplomatic center of Washington, protesters gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue overlooking the White House grounds, carrying Palestinian flags and rejecting Netanyahu’s visit while chanting slogans in support of Palestine and the Gaza Strip.
Al Jazeera reported protesters confronted Netanyahu’s motorcade, waving Palestinian flags and calling for his arrest, with chants including “War criminal!”
In another account of demonstrations, Al-Araby Al Jadeed said activists raised Palestinian flags and banners with slogans including “Free Gaza” and “Stop the US-Israeli war machine,” and it quoted an activist, Ataf, saying: “We are here with a popular group to inform our government that we are not satisfied with the presence of war criminal Netanyahu in our streets.”
The same Al-Araby Al Jadeed report described a solidarity group calling for the ICC to arrest Netanyahu and said the groups stated Netanyahu and his government “caused the deaths of thousands in Lebanon and stoked the war on Iran.”
Gaza stakes and next steps
While the Washington meeting centered on Iran, multiple reports tied the Netanyahu visit to the ongoing war on Gaza and the demand for a U.S. plan to rebuild it.
Anadolu Ajansı said the protesters’ message criticized U.S. support for Israel and stated that with American support, Israel began on October 8, 2023 a “genocidal war in Gaza” that has lasted two years, leaving more than 73,000 dead and more than 174,000 wounded among Palestinians, most of them children and women.
Al-Araby Al Jadeed also said the U.S. State Department told it that Trump has a plan to rebuild Gaza, placing the future of Gaza directly into the political stakes around Netanyahu’s reception.
In parallel, tv5monde described the meeting as their first since the beginning of the war in the Middle East and said Washington wanted to “redonner une chance à la diplomatie avec l’Iran,” while it noted Israel had not taken part in the last wave of confrontations in July.
