President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel presented a united front on Monday, papering over their differences on how to carry out the Gaza peace plan while heaping praise on each other.
The two leaders, who met over a multicourse lunch inside the dining room of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, shared few details on the substance of their talks or how they planned to resolve the many outstanding issues between them.
Nor did they shed light on how Mr. Trump’s Gaza plan is to advance into its next phase, in which Hamas is supposed to disarm, the Israelis are supposed to pull back their forces and other countries are supposed to commit troops to an “international stabilization force.”
But Mr. Trump did make at least one commitment. He said that the United States would back Israeli strikes on Iran if Iran continued with its ballistic missile and nuclear weapon program. The president said he has heard Iran is “behaving badly” and looking to restart its nuclear program, but he declined to provide additional details.
For Mr. Trump, the meeting was an opportunity to take another victory lap for orchestrating the Gaza cease-fire, however tenuous it may be — he repeatedly overstated it as “peace in the Middle East.” And Mr. Netanyahu departed with fresh footage of Mr. Trump lauding him as Israel’s savior, which will no doubt prove useful in the Israeli leader’s re-election campaign.
“You needed a very special man to really carry through and really help Israel through this horrible jam,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Netanyahu.
The tone was a shift from Mr. Trump’s recent posture, as he has shown more willingness in recent months to voice his frustrations with Mr. Netanyahu and the ways in which he has delayed or undercut Mr. Trump’s efforts to advance his plans for a post-conflict Gaza. On Monday, there was no sign of friction, though the president said at one point that Mr. Netanyahu could be difficult.
“I’m not concerned about anything that Israel is doing,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu mostly sidestepped questions about the next steps of the Gaza peace plan.
On the West Bank, where Mr. Netanyahu faces pressure from his base to annex more territory and the United States has made clear it opposes that, Mr. Trump acknowledged the two leaders did not agree “100 percent” on the issue. But when asked about the nature of the disagreement, the president declined to elaborate. “Well, I don’t want to do that,” he said, before adding, “But he will do the right thing.”
On the possibility that Turkey could play a role in a postwar Gaza, which Israel staunchly opposes, Mr. Trump praised the leaders of both countries, who have a bitter relationship.
“I’m with him all the way,” he said of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. “I’m with Bibi all the way. Nothing’s going to happen.”
Mr. Trump also praised the new leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Shara, and said he was hopeful the new leadership would usher in a better relationship between Israel and Syria. But Israel’s military action in Syria has angered the White House, and some Israeli officials do not trust Mr. al-Shara. Mr. Netanyahu said only that he wanted to ensure the country’s border with Syria was safe.
“In terms of public appearances, Netanyahu got what he wanted: a full public embrace from President Trump to show off to Israeli voters,” Ilan Goldenberg, the chief policy officer at J Street, the center-left lobbying group that promotes a two-state solution in the Middle East, said in a statement. “The substance of the meeting is less clear. Cracks are beginning to show in how they approach Turkey, Syria, the West Bank and even the next phase of the war in Gaza, but what was discussed behind closed doors remains unknown.”
Mr. Netanyahu, in his fifth visit with Mr. Trump this year, seemed to struggle to find new ways to say the president was the best friend Israel had ever had in the White House, at one point going so far as to praise the meal the American leader had just served him.
The Israeli government also bestowed another award on Mr. Trump, the latest in a trend of foreign leaders and organizations trying to win over the president with new honors. At the start of the bilateral meeting, Israel’s education minister, Yoav Kisch, called in to share that Mr. Trump would be awarded the Israel Prize, which is traditionally given to Israeli citizens in various categories of the arts and science.
And Mr. Trump suggested that Mr. Netanyahu would soon win a prize of his own: a presidential pardon in his long-running corruption trial. Mr. Trump has urged Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to grant Mr. Netanyahu a pardon.
“I spoke to the president and it’s — he tells me it’s on its way,” Mr. Trump said on Monday. “You can’t do better than that, right?”
But Mr. Herzog’s office quickly denied that any decision had been made and said a decision was weeks away at minimum.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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