Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday departed for Washington for talks with US President Donald Trump.
According to AA, Netanyahu is visiting Washington at Trump's invitation and will discuss issues of mutual interest to Israel and the US.
The Israeli prime minister said on Sunday, July 16, that he plans to attend the UN General Assembly in New York despite calls for his arrest by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Last Tuesday, Mamdani called Netanyahu a "war criminal" and urged the US government to enforce an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against him if he enters the US.
US President Donald Trump, however, has vowed that Netanyahu “will not be arrested” while visiting the US.
The ICC issued arrest warrants in November 2024 for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Trump Netanyahu meeting
Netanyahu has not been to the White House since the war began and has been angling for an invitation since at least April, two people familiar with the matter said, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, Politico reported.
“At first there was no meeting. They arranged it in the last couple of days,” one of the people familiar with the matter said Friday, adding that Netanyahu is eager to consult with Trump about the escalation with Iran as well as the US nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia.
Trump and Netanyahu last met face to face in February, in the lead-up to the war, which Trump at the time predicted would last four to five weeks. That was nearly five months ago.
The tension between the two leaders is particularly notable because the Trump administration is currently waging the aggressive military campaign against Iran that Netanyahu has been pushing for.
For much of the past two weeks, the US had been launching daily strikes against Iran, though the administration said it paused those strikes over the weekend.
