A day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, he headed to Florida to speak to former president Donald trump his Mar-a-Lago estate to discuss the ongoing war in Gaza, their first face-to-face meeting since Trump lost the election four years ago.
Trump has been openly critical of Netanyahu's handling of the war, which has killed more than 39,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
A day before their meeting, Trump told Fox News that Netanyahu should "wrap up" Israel's war against Hamas, saying "it can't continue to go on like this. It's too long, it's too much, you have to get your hostages back."
Brian Katulis, a senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy at the Middle East Institute, said the main purpose of the meeting wasn't so much to discuss policy as it was to use each other as political props.
"Bibi Netanyahu is a very wounded and weakened leader right now," said Katulis. "The point of his trip, not just to see Trump, but also the speech to Congress and the visits to the White House are to try to project back to the Israeli public that see, I'm still standing, and I actually can have positive ties with everyone from across the aisle."
For Trump's part, Katulis says meeting with Netanyahu caters to his Republican base, evangelical Christians, and others who are conservative and pro-Israel.
"Having sort of the warm embrace, not only with Netanyahu and his wife as well, I think is the symbolism and using Bibi as a prop to essentially say, look, I'm different from those that you just met with at the White House the day before."
Trump fulfilled many of Netanyahu's wishes while in office, like moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, declaring that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were not a violation of international law, and shutting down diplomatic ties between the U.S. and Palestinians.
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But his relationship with Netanyahu fractured after the 2020 election when Netanyahu was quick to congratulate President Biden on his victory while Trump and other Republicans denied the legitimacy of the election results.
Last year, Trump told Time he "had a very bad experience with Bibi" in 2020 after Israel dropped out of the U.S.-led strike in Iraq that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top Iranian general. He also said Netanyahu was "rightly" criticized for allowing after the October 7th attacks to happen.
On Friday, however, Trump said he's always had a "good relationship" with Netanyahu. Trump also said his own re-election would be crucial to security in the Middle East, warning of "World War III" should he lose in November, a claim Katulis was quick to call "hyperbolic."
"Most voters these days, as emotionally charged as the debate is about the Gaza war, most voters don't really care. It's not the thing that will drive people's decisions at the ballot box as far as polls tell us it," Katulis said. "The issues that will drive decisions are inflation, the economy, immigration, abortion, [and] just the very survival of our democracy."
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