United States President Donald Trump has met Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House for a second time in 24 hours to discuss a possible ceasefire deal in Gaza.
The unscheduled talks on Tuesday evening lasted just over an hour, with no media access, and came as Israeli forces killed at least 95 Palestinians in Gaza.
The two men had also met for several hours during a dinner at the White House on Monday, during Netanyahu’s third visit to the US since the president began his second term on January 20.
Ahead of the talks on Tuesday, Trump said he would be speaking with Netanyahu “almost exclusively” about Gaza.
“We gotta get that solved. Gaza is – it’s a tragedy, and he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved, and I think the other side wants to,” he said.
Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Washington, DC, said “very little information” has come out from the latest talks, so “it has been difficult to ascertain exactly what’s going on”.
“But the fact that it was so hermetically sealed, the fact that there has been no clear readout of what was discussed, the fact that the meeting lasted just over an hour – all of it may indicate that there’s some kind of stumbling block, something that is clouding the optimistic position that the two leaders have adopted over the past 24 hours,” Hanna said.
Shortly before Trump met Netanyahu, his special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, suggested a ceasefire deal in Gaza is close and said Washington hopes to see an agreement finalised by the end of the week.
He said the issues keeping Israel and Hamas from agreeing had now dropped to one from four.
“We are hopeful that by the end of this week, we’ll have an agreement that will bring us into a 60-day ceasefire. Ten live hostages will be released. Nine deceased will be released,” Witkoff told reporters at a meeting of Trump’s Cabinet.
But Netanyahu, speaking shortly afterwards, during a meeting with the speaker of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, said Israel’s campaign in the Palestinian enclave was not done and that negotiators are “certainly working” on a ceasefire.
“We have still to finish the job in Gaza, release all our hostages, eliminate and destroy Hamas’s military and government capabilities,” the Israeli leader said.
Aljazeera
