Most important points
- The Israeli Prime Minister met Donald Trump after talks with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
- Trump said Harris was a “radical leftist” and that her comments about Gaza were “not very nice to Israel.”
- Netanyahu said he hoped his trip to the US would lead to a faster ceasefire.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump sharply criticized his Democratic political rivals and warned of dire consequences for the Middle East if he is not re-elected during his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Florida on Friday.
Netanyahu traveled to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida vacation spot, to meet Trump. Upon arrival, he and his wife Sara were greeted warmly, kissing him on both cheeks and then taking the longtime prime minister’s hand.
The meeting concluded a week in which and held talks with President Joe Biden and presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“Our country is run by incompetent people,” Trump said as he sat across from Netanyahu.
“If we win, it’s very simple. It’s all going to be fine, and very quickly,” Trump said. “If we don’t, you could end up with major wars in the Middle East and maybe World War III.”
Polls show Harris and Trump locked in a neck-and-neck race for the White House. That has prompted world leaders like Netanyahu, who have traditionally aligned more with Trump’s Republicans than Biden’s Democrats, to strike a balance in their dealings with the US.
Kamala’s comments ‘disrespectful’: Trump
The tone was in striking contrast to on Thursday, in which the vice president ordered him to reach a peace deal with Gaza and urged her not to be “silent” about the suffering in the Palestinian enclave.
“What has happened in Gaza over the last nine months has been devastating. The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time,” Harris told reporters.
Trump on Friday described Harris as a “radical leftist” and said he found her comments “disrespectful — they weren’t exactly nice about Israel.”
Before Benjamin Netanyahu visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort, he met Kamala Harris in Washington. Source: Getty / Roberto Schmidt
An anonymous Israeli official said it was hoped Harris’ comments would not be interpreted by Hamas as a sign of a rift between the United States and Israel, “and thus delay an agreement.”
The conflict escalated on October 7 when Hamas militants from Gaza attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages, according to Israeli counts.
Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza has killed more than 39,000 people and created a humanitarian crisis, with most of the coastal enclave flattened, people displaced, and suffering from famine and a shortage of emergency aid.
‘A very good relationship’
Trump dismissed any suggestion of tensions with Netanyahu, saying his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had always been warm, while the Israeli leader said he hoped progress would be made in Gaza ceasefire talks.
“We have a very good relationship,” he said, pointing to policy changes during his presidency, including the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and .
Netanyahu said he hoped his trip to the US would lead to a faster ceasefire.
“I hope so. But I think time will tell,” he told reporters. He said he believed there was movement in efforts to broker a ceasefire because of Israeli military pressure and said he would send a team to Rome to talk.
Netanyahu had angered Trump when he congratulated Biden on his victory over Trump in the 2020 election. Trump falsely claims that the election was stolen from him by voter fraud.
Trump recently criticized Netanyahu for Israel’s security failures, which allowed Hamas to launch an attack on Israel on October 7 that sparked the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
After the meeting, Trump’s campaign released a statement about the meeting, saying he “pledged that when he returns to the White House, he will do everything he can to bring peace to the Middle East and prevent anti-Semitism from spreading across college campuses across the United States.”
Netanyahu posted a photo online of himself standing next to Trump, holding a hat with the words “TOTAL VICTORY,” which he has vowed to achieve against Hamas in Gaza.
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