United States President Donald Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort, on Monday (local time) to discuss the next phase of the Gaza situation.
Earlier in the day, Netanyahu also met with Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, and shared photos of the interaction on social media.
“He’s a wartime prime minister. He’s done a phenomenal job. He’s taken Israel through a period of trauma. Israel with other people may not exist right now, if you want to know the truth…that’s a pretty big statement, but that’s how I feel. If you had a bad prime minister, Israel wouldn’t exist today,” the US president told reporters before entering his resort with Netanyahu.
“We met a force that very few countries could handle. We met a force and we were very victorious, to put it mildly,” Trump continued, adding, “Now I’m hearing that Iran is trying to rebuild, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down. We’re going to knock the hell out of them.”
Trump also told reporters that it was essential for Hamas to disarm in order to move forward with the second phase of its peace plan.
“We’ve already made a lot of progress. We’ve had about a five-minute meeting and we’ve already resolved about three issues,” CNN reported just before going to press and opening the meeting.
Trump’s meeting with the Israeli prime minister comes a few hours after his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he discussed the current situation in Ukraine.
This is a developing story. Check back later for more updates.
