Netanyahu To Meet Trump As US Intensifies Gaza Ceasefire Push

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to hold a crucial White House meeting with US President Donald Trump on Monday amid assertions from Washington that an ambitious plan to end the war in Gaza is nearly complete.

The meeting — the fourth between the two allies since Trump took office in January — comes after the US leader shared a 21-point proposal aimed at concluding the Israel-Hamas conflict with other regional heads in New York last week.

“We have a real chance for greatness in the Middle East,” Trump said on his Truth Social account on Sunday. “All are on board for something special, first time ever. We will get it done.”

Trump’s claims don’t always pan out, and both Israel and Hamas say they need to study the plan. On Friday, a senior Israeli official told US editors in a background briefing that only after the Monday meeting would Israel comment. Hamas said it has not yet seen the plan.

Reports in the Washington Post and the Times of Israel suggest that, under the proposal, Hamas would release all 48 living and dead hostages within 48 hours, while Israeli military operations will cease and its troops gradually withdraw. Israel would agree to free Palestinian prisoners and allow significantly more aid to enter Gaza.

For its part, Hamas will disarm and have no role in governing the Palestinian territory, a transitional administration would be established and a plan to deradicalise schools and mosques set up.

Israeli officials have declined to confirm or deny the details. One top Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called some of the reported points fake trial balloons.

The talks come as Israel intensifies its offensive on Gaza City, the territory’s de facto capital, with the aim of eliminating Hamas’s remaining military strongholds. Israeli forces have driven out 700,000 of the city’s 1 million residents, and has destroyed high-rises it says contain Hamas equipment, as well as tunnels where Hamas fighters operate.

Israeli ground troops pushed deeper into Gaza City on Sunday evening, reaching about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) from the main hospital in the heart of the city, according to witness accounts and social-media footage, which showed tanks and military vehicles in central areas.

The war, two years old next week, has killed about 66,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Gazans have been repeatedly displaced and face abominable living and health conditions as well as a severe lack of food, with a UN-backed body declaring a famine in parts of the strip a month ago.

The senior Israeli official who briefed US editors said there are five conditions upon which Israel is insisting to end the war: Hamas disarmed; all hostages returned; Gaza demilitarised; Israel in charge of security; and the establishment of an administration that comes neither from Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority, which rules parts of the West Bank.

These conditions contradict what Hamas has long demanded, including a full Israeli withdrawal and no disarmament. The Iran-backed group is designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union.

Attention to the plight of Palestinians was intense at last week’s annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, where 10 countries, including France, the UK and Canada, joined the vast majority of members in recognising a state of Palestine while denouncing Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank.

The US and Israel strongly objected, saying the recognition is a reward for terrorism since it comes in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war. Hamas militants killed 1,200 people in that assault and kidnapped another 250.

Israel views Hamas as part of the Iranian axis aimed relentlessly at its destruction and therefore argues that it mustn’t stop its war until Hamas is eliminated. Much of the world sees the Israeli assault as something else — a disproportionate act of scorched earth vengeance that’s lost any legitimacy. It draws a distinction between Hamas and the more moderate Palestinian Authority.

Some 159 nations now back the idea of a Palestinian state and are using the diplomatic push to pressure Israel to stop the war. Israel, which for some years was also open to Palestinian statehood, now considers it anathema, risking an attack similar to that of Oct. 7 and drawing little difference among Palestinian factions.

Israel has also moved distinctly to the right in the past three years, with the country run by a Netanyahu-led coalition government that includes settler nationalists who want to annex both Gaza and the West Bank, where some 600,000 Israeli settlers live among 3 million Palestinians.

Trump said last week he won’t permit Israel to annex the West Bank. The senior Israeli official on Friday declined to comment on that, although a number of Israeli ministers have called for annexation as the proper response to the world’s embrace of a state of Palestine and the isolation of Israel.

Among those engaged in designing the Gaza peace plan are former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.