“The fact that this would be President Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader since his inauguration is telling,” Netanyahu told reporters before boarding his plane in Tel Aviv.

He said it is “a testimony to the strength of the Israeli-American alliance” and to the two men’s “personal friendship.”

Trump met with Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago on July 26, 2024. At the time Netanyahu said he hoped for a cease-fire and release of hostages.

Netanyahu and Trump last met in the White House on September 2020. Trump signed an accord in which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain agreed to establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel.

This was before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Militants killed around 1,200 and the Hamas-run Health Ministry claimed more than 47,400 have been killed during the war.

“The decisions we made in the war have already changed the face of the Middle East,” Netanyahu said at the airport. “Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map. But I believe that working closely with President Trump, we can redraw it even further and for the better.”

Netanyahu said he expects to discuss with Trump “victory over Hamas, achieving the release of all our hostages and dealing with the Iranian terror axis in all its components.”

Netanyahu’s office said negotiations on the second phase of the Gaza cease-fire will begin Monday, when he meets first with U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.

Jordan’s King Abdullah will meet with Trump on Feb. 11 at the White House after an invitation, the Jordan royal palace said Sunday.

One week ago, Trump said Egypt and Jordan should take in Palestinians. Jordan and Egypt have rejected Trump’s idea to “clean out” the enclave that originally had 2 million residents.

Other developments in the Middle East

• The Israeli army confirmed an airstrike in Gaza on Sunday. A car trying to reach the north of the enclave along a route not approved in the cease-fire deal. Mohammed Shatali, a spokesman for al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat, said five people were hospitalized, including one child who later died.
• Israel Defense Forces said it demolished several buildings in the West Bank city of Jenin that were being used as “terror infrastructure.”
• The Israeli army said that it entered two new villages in the occupied West Bank and killed “a number of terrorists” in three airstrikes the previous day. IDF said it has killed more 50 Palestinian terror operatives in the northern West Bank since launching a major counter-terrorism offensive nearly two weeks ago.
• Thirty-seven patients were transferred from Gaza to Egypt via the Rafah border crossing after it reopened for the first time since May 2024, the director-general of the World Health Organization said.