An Israeli government minister discussed the proposal with Trump and Jared Kushner at Mar-a-Lago on Sunday before traveling to the White House for talks.
By Shira Rubin, Suzan Haidamous and John Hudson, The Washington PostPresident Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announce an Israeli-Palestinian peace proposal at the White House on Jan. 28, 2020.
in this article, the official spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. Netanyahu said in a video statement Sunday that he had talked to Trump three times in recent days and that the two saw “major opportunities ahead for Israel, especially in advancing peace” - a striking statement after more than a year of devastating war in Gaza and six weeks after Israel broadened its military campaign against Hezbollah by sending ground troops into southern Lebanon.The Israeli prime minister was planning for a new era in Washington well before Election Day on Nov. 5.
Nearly 900,000 people have been internally displaced by Israel’s expanding military campaign in Lebanon. More than 3,300 have been killed, according to the country’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says hundreds of women, children and first responders are among the dead. Hezbollah said about 500 of its fighters were killed before the start of the Israeli ground operation, when the group stopped releasing a public count.
“The one thing Netanyahu cares more about than Trump is his own domestic politics, and getting Israeli civilians back to the north is a major objective that he may not want to wait on,” he said. But Netanyahu - who has been accused by his critics of extending and expanding the war for his own political survival after being widely blamed for the security failures on Oct. 7 - appears to be betting that the political moment is ripe for a breakthrough.
Netanyahu’s consultations with Trump before and after the election demonstrate how much he had staked on the results of the vote and how carefully he is calibrating his strategy for the new administration. But Ziv said the prime minister will need to weigh the “whims” of the president-elect - a notoriously unpredictable politician - against national security calculations, since “his entire leverage is Trump.
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