(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
Axios’s Barak Ravid reported on President Donald Trump’s upcoming meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and detailed Netanyahu’s falling credibility within the Trump White House.
Ravid’s report included several juicy quotes from Trump White House insiders, including one official saying, “It’s J.D., Marco, Jared, Steve, Susie. Netanyahu has lost them. The only one he has left is the president, who still likes him, but even Trump wants to see the Gaza deal moving faster than it is right now.”
The official was referring to Trump’s top aides and officials, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, son-in-law Jared Kushner, Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Netanyahu and Trump are set to meet on Monday at Mar-a-Lago to discuss the future of Gaza, a topic on which Trump is eager to make progress quickly.
Ravid reported on the state of play ahead of the meeting, writing, “White House officials think Netanyahu is slow-walking the peace process, and fear he will resume the war with Hamas. But while the Israeli prime minister is butting heads with Trump’s team, he hopes to bring the president himself over to his more hawkish point of view, a senior Israeli official said.”
Ravid spoke to another White House official who told him, “It’s felt for some time like the Israelis have buyer’s remorse. Implementing the Gaza deal is hard enough, but the Israelis sometimes do things that make it even harder.”
“Sometimes we feel the IDF commanders on the ground are just trigger-happy,” a third White House official told Ravid, referring to concern over Israel’s continued killing of top Hamas commanders. The Trump White House has warned Israel in recent months not to violate the fragile ceasefire that ended the two-year war between Israel and Hamas that began with Hamas’s brutal October 7th attack on civilian towns in southern Israel.
