WASHINGTON — As president, Donald Trump went much further than his predecessors in fulfilling Israel’s prime ministerial duties Benjamin Netanyahu’s best wishes from the United States. But by the time Trump left the White House, relations between the two had broken down after Netanyahu was quick to congratulate Joe Biden on his victory in the 2020 presidential election.
On Friday, the two men will meet in person for the first time in almost four years, to test whether the relationship can still be repaired. Both have an interest in overcoming their differences.
For Trump, now the Republican presidential nominee, the meeting could position him as an ally and statesman, and could fuel Republican efforts to portray themselves as the party most loyal to Israel.
That’s like division among Americans over US support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is tearing apart decades of strong bipartisan support for Israel, the largest recipient of US aid.
For Netanyahu, who was in the United States to address Congress and meet Biden, restoring ties with Trump is of paramount importance given the prospect that he could once again become president of the United States, Israel’s main arms supplier and protector.
For both men, Friday’s meeting at Mar-a-Lago before their home crowd will be a confirmation of their self-image as strong leaders who have accomplished great things on the world stage and can do so again.
One of the political risks for Netanyahu is whether he can get more of the conditions he wants in a deal on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage releases, and in the long-awaited conclusion of a normalization deal with Saudi Arabia, if he waits until the Biden administration is in power and hopes that Trump wins.
“Benjamin Netanyahu has spent much of his career over the past two decades allying himself to the Republican Party,” said Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. diplomat for Arab-Israeli negotiations, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The next six months will mean “rebuilding ties with a testy, angry president,” Miller said, referring to Trump.
Trump severed ties with Netanyahu in early 2021 after the Israeli prime minister was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Biden on his presidential election victory, ignoring Trump’s false claim that he had won.
“Bibi could have kept his mouth shut,” Trump said in a interview with an Israeli newspaper then. “He made a terrible mistake.”
Netanyahu and Trump last met at a signing ceremony at the White House in September 2020 for the signature diplomatic achievement of both men’s political careers. It was a Trump administration-brokered deal in which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel.
For Israel, it was the first time the two countries formally recognized it. It was a major step in what Israel hopes will be a reduction in tensions and a broadening of economic ties with its Arab neighbors.
In public messages and statements after his break with Netanyahu, Trump portrayed himself as someone who had stuck his neck out for Israel as president, and that Netanyahu had paid him for it with disloyalty.
He has also criticized Netanyahu on other issues, accusing him of being “unprepared” for the October 7 Hamas attacks that sparked the war in Gaza.
In his high-profile speech to Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu expressed his appreciation for Biden, who has continued his military and diplomatic support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza despite opposition within his Democratic Party.
But Netanyahu complimented Trump, calling the regional deals Trump helped broker historic and thanking him “for everything he has done for Israel.”
Netanyahu listed actions by the Trump administration that Israeli governments have long been pushing for. For example, the US officially declared Israel sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in a 1967 war. The US also took a tougher stance toward Iran. Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, breaking with the long-standing US policy that the status of Jerusalem should be determined in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
“I appreciated that,” Trump told Fox & Friends” on Thursday, referring to Netanyahu’s praise.
However, he continued to criticize Israel’s war effort, which left more than 39,000 Palestinians dead.
“I want him to finish it and do it quickly. You have to do it quickly, because they are being decimated by his publicity,” Trump said in Thursday’s interview.
“Israel is not very good at public relations, I can tell you that,” he added.
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Associated Press writers Natalie Melzer in Tel Aviv, Israel, Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Jill Colvin in New York contributed.
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