Washington — President Trump will hold a joint news conference at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday. It will be Mr. Trump’s first joint news conference with a foreign leader in his new term.
“I think it’s a testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance,” Netanyahu said in a statement ahead of his trip on being the first foreign leader to meet with Mr. Trump since he began his second term.
Netanyahu’s visit to Washington comes as a fragile ceasefire continues to hold between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Mediators have begun negotiations for a second phase of the deal that would free all the remaining hostages and end the war with Hamas.
“I have no assurances that it’ll hold. I mean, I’ve seen people brutalized,” Mr. Trump told reporters Monday in the Oval Office. “I have no guarantees that the peace is going to hold.”
Mr. Trump’s Mideast envoy, Steve Witkoff, who helped finalize that first phase of the ceasefire deal, told reporters that the agreement is “holding so far” and “we’re certainly hopeful.”
The Israeli leader said he and Mr. Trump would discuss “victory over Hamas, achieving the release of all our hostages and dealing with the Iranian terror axis in all its components,” referring to Iran’s proxies in the region, including Hamas.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has said he also has plans to meet with Netanyahu at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
