“Well, welcome back, Mr. Prime Minister,” Biden said before the meeting began in the Oval Office. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. I think we should get to it.”
Biden has repeatedly said a cease-fire deal was imminent in recent weeks, even though the United States and other negotiating partners have been frustrated for months by the lack of an agreement.
The meetings, part of Netanyahu’s hours-long visit to the White House, came a day after the Israeli leader delivered a defiant speech to a joint meeting of Congress. Netanyahu rejected criticisms from international organizations about Israel’s conduct, posited without evidence that Iran was funding pro-Palestinian protesters surrounding the Capitol and vowed Israel would settle for nothing less than “total victory.”
Harris’ solo meeting with Netanyahu, meanwhile, took on greater importance after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee this week following Biden’s stunning decision to withdraw from the presidential race. She has not publicly diverged from Biden’s approach to the war, but she has pushed the administration to more heavily consider Palestinian suffering in its response and often been the highest profile official to speak emphatically about civilian casualties.
“She’s been a full partner in our policies in the Middle East, particularly with our policies towards Israel and the war in Gaza,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said of Harris before her meeting with Netanyahu.
He added that she has “been involved in nearly every conversation that the president has had with the prime minister and very much engaged throughout.”
Since announcing his decision not to seek re-election, Biden has said ending the war in Gaza remains a top priority in his final months in office. “I’m going to keep working to end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages, and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” Biden said Wednesday during his Oval Office address.
Kirby told reporters Thursday that the negotiating parties are closer “than we’ve been before” to a deal, though he emphasized there are still important gaps to bridge.
“We need to bring the war to an end and one of the principal things that the president is going to talk to the prime minister about today is how we get there, how do we end this war, and the best way in his view is to get this deal in place,” Kirby said.
The first phase of an agreement would include a six-week pause in fighting and the release of some hostages. The second phase would continue a cessation of hostilities while Hamas and Israel negotiate a permanent cease-fire, determining the withdrawing of Israeli forces from Gaza.
Biden’s meeting on Thursday was his first face-to-face encounter with Netanyahu since the president traveled to Israel in the days after the Oct. 7 attacks.
Biden tightly embraced Israel in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, but as Netanyahu has continued an all-out assault on Gaza, he has become more critical, calling on Israeli leaders to allow more aid into the territory, where nearly 2 million civilians are suffering from widespread starvation and a collapsed health-care system.
In his brief public remarks, Netanyahu spoke warmly about Biden, though after leaving the White House, the Israeli leader will head to Mar-a-Lago to meet with former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.
“From a proud Jewish Zionist to a proud Irish American Zionist, I want to thank you for 50 years of public service and 50 years of support for the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said to Biden.
Despite the ongoing tensions, Kirby said Biden and Netanyahu have “healthy relationship,” though he did not know if the president had watched Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday.
“And by healthy, I mean they’re not going to agree on everything.” Kirby said. “They haven’t, through the long political lives that both of them have enjoyed, always agreed on everything. They come from two different political traditions, but they know one another.”
After their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, the two leaders met with families of Americans held hostage by Hamas. By including the families, the White House hoped to elevate their message that Netanyahu needs to stop making new demands and agree to the hostage cease-fire deal on the table, officials familiar with the matter said.
Netanyahu’s government is negotiating for the release of more than 100 Israeli hostages, though of that number, many are believed to be dead.
Following their meeting with Biden and Netanyahu, the hostage families said they were now “more optimistic” than at any other time since November, when Hamas released more than 100 people in the war’s first — and only — negotiated hostage release, said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen.
Speaking in front of cameras outside the West Wing, Dekel-Chen said the families were given “absolute commitment from the Biden administration and from Netanyahu that they understand the urgency of this moment now to waste no time and to complete this deal as it currently stands, with as little change as humanly possible within it.”
The families also emphasized the convergence between Biden, Harris and Trump in supporting an immediate deal.
“We’ve got a rare moment now where the current president of the United States, and anybody who might become president of the United States — both Vice President Harris and Donald Trump — are all aligned in saying this deal must get done now,” said Jon Polin, father of American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Since the start of the Gaza War, Netanyahu has come under criticism for putting his military objectives related to the total destruction of Hamas ahead of the urgency of securing the release of hostages.
Earlier this summer, the United States blamed Hamas for adding new demands to the deal, but that outlook shifted earlier this month when Netanyahu directed Mossad Chief David Barnea to negotiate further stipulations that moved the goal posts, said diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Under the new conditions, Israel would not agree to withdraw its forces from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border, the diplomats said. Israel would also not allow unrestricted access for Gazans seeking to return to their homes in the north — insisting that its forces be permitted to establish checkpoints to monitor the movement of the displaced.
A senior administration official said on Wednesday that the United States was looking for both Israel and Hamas to move on certain things to conclude a deal, but he did not spell out the details.
The State Department has used much less confrontational language toward Israel when describing its negotiating position in the talks.
When asked about Israel’s negotiating position, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, “We have been engaged with them over the course of the past few weeks trying to bridge the final differences. And what they tell us and what they continue to show is that they are working to try to get a deal.”
