Israel says Netanyahu invited to meet Trump at White House

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet US President Donald Trump at the White House next week.

Netanyahu’s office said the visit would take place on 4 February and that he was the first foreign leader to be invited to the White House during Trump’s second term.

A White House official confirmed there would be a meeting early next week, but said the date and time had yet to be finalised, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Trump said Netanyahu would be travelling to Washington to meet him “very soon”, without giving a specific date.

The meeting comes as an initial six-week ceasefire is being observed in Gaza after a deal was struck between Israel and Hamas to halt the war.

Trump claimed credit for getting the ceasefire and hostage release deal over the line when it was first announced, saying on Truth Social the “epic” agreement was possible only because he won November’s presidential election.

The White House meeting would also come after Trump said last week that he wanted Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians from Gaza, after describing the strip as a “demolition site”.

Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority condemned the proposal. Jordan and Egypt have also rejected the idea.

However, the idea of encouraging Gazans to relocate to neighbouring countries has long been pushed by hardline right-wing members of Netanyahu’s government.

The January ceasefire deal has paused the war which began when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 back to Gaza as hostages.

More than 47,350 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, have been killed in Israel’s subsequent offensive, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry says.