A great deal of buildup always precedes prime ministerial visits to the US, and this week’s visit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington was no exception. In fact, it was preceded by more than most.
There was an expectation that a Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal would be announced. That an expansion of the Abraham Accords would be broadly hinted at. That a coordinated US-Israel policy regarding upcoming talks with Iran would be thrashed out.
As of Thursday afternoon, neither of the first two expectations has been met. As for coordination toward Iran, if guidelines and an agreement have been worked out, that is all taking place very discreetly behind tightly closed doors.
As Netanyahu’s visit drew to a close – though on Thursday it was still unclear whether he would fly home that evening as planned or stay through the weekend for additional talks – what stood out was not what was said, but what wasn’t. The most notable feature of the visit so far was its silence – its lack of news.
There were no handshakes in the Oval Office with US President Donald Trump as dozens of cameras clicked, no dramatic announcements, only limited photo-ops. The two Trump-Netanyahu meetings – first a dinner in the Blue Room on Monday evening, then a follow-up meeting in the Oval Office the next night – took place long after Israelis had gone to bed. That’s a sharp departure from what has almost become protocol during these prime ministerial visits: scheduling the high-profile meetings in time to make the 8 p.m. Israeli television news.
Not this time.
The relative dearth of news-generating events and press opportunities was not accidental. It signaled that this was not a trip designed for headlines, performative diplomacy, or political theater. The structure of the visit sent a clear message: the stakes are high, and the risks of saying the wrong thing to the wrong audience at the wrong time are even higher.
It’s not every day that a media-savvy Israeli prime minister meets a voluble US president like Trump without turning the Oval Office moment into a headline event.
But this time, the choreography was intentional. The few symbolic moments that were revealed – the gifting of a mezuzah case in the shape of a B-2 bomber made out of Iranian missile shrapnel, a letter nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize – were carefully selected and tightly controlled.
The message? This trip was about substance, not optics.
BACK IN March, the last time Netanyahu was in Washington, Iran dominated the agenda. It was at an Oval Office photo-op that Trump announced the US would begin nuclear talks with Tehran.
Ironically, while the current visit came just two weeks after Operation Rising Lion and a US-led strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, it wasn’t Iran that took center stage. It was Gaza.
The shift of attention back to Gaza – from the bombed centrifuges of Fordow to the tunnels of Beit Hanun – was not a matter of ideology. It was a matter of immediacy. Operation Rising Lion had a definitive endpoint: the US attacks on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. The war in Gaza, by contrast, continues to drag on.
Five IDF soldiers were killed in Gaza on Monday, another on Wednesday, bringing the total number of Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza since the Iran operation to 17. That grim tally underscored a hard truth: the war is far from over, and the Iranian operation did not end it.
That reality, as well as the hostages still languishing in Hamas captivity, continues to anchor Israel’s emotional center of gravity. For the public, it weighs more heavily than even the glow of success from the Iran strike.
Trump sees return of Gaza hostages as priority
FOR TRUMP as well, ending the war and freeing the hostages are a priority. He has said so repeatedly.
“We’re very close to a deal,” Trump declared yet again on Wednesday, echoing what he has been saying for days. “We want to have a ceasefire, we want to have peace. We want to get the hostages back. And I think we’re close to doing it.”
And yet, unlike two weeks ago – when he reportedly ordered Netanyahu to call off airstrikes on Tehran after Iran broke the ceasefire – Trump has not, at least publicly, applied pressure on Netanyahu to make concessions that would hasten an agreement in Gaza.
This time, the diplomacy is being done quietly. A Qatari delegation arrived in Washington this week, and according to an Axios report, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer met with a senior Qatari official and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff at the White House to discuss a potential deal and try to bridge the remaining gaps.
Israel has reportedly passed a new proposal to Hamas via Qatar. The plan centers on a gradual redeployment of the IDF from key areas in Gaza, with the Morag Corridor – believed to be the last major point of contention in the ceasefire negotiations – at the heart of the discussions.
One question hangs over all this, even if few are voicing it aloud: Did Israel trade Gaza for Fordow? In other words, did Netanyahu agree to soften his stance in Gaza in exchange for US participation in the strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure?
If Trump helped Netanyahu tick his most crucial strategic box – inflicting a devastating blow to Iran’s nuclear timeline – might Netanyahu now be expected to help Trump tick his own: notching a major diplomatic win in Gaza?
And perhaps, with Iran no longer on the front burner, Netanyahu feels he can afford to be more flexible. After all, it will be hard for Hamas to claim any form of victory at a moment when the Iranian “axis of resistance” – of which it was a central pillar – has so dramatically unraveled since October 7.
“They took over Iraq, Syria, Lebanon with Hezbollah, Gaza with Hamas, and the mouth of the Red Sea with the Houthis in Yemen. They were invincible,” Netanyahu said of Iran during a Fox News interview on Wednesday. “But we broke them.
“We first peeled off Hezbollah, which led to the collapse of the Assad regime, which in turn led to the collapse of the Iranian axis,” he continued. “So I think it’s a different Middle East.”
That different Middle East may now be prompting Netanyahu to readjust his redlines in Gaza.
Still, he has his coalition to think about. Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich and Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben-Gvir have made their redlines abundantly clear: no deal that leaves Hamas intact will be accepted. Which is why Netanyahu’s rhetoric in Washington, even while discussing a Gaza ceasefire, has been carefully measured.
“We are determined to complete our war objectives in Gaza,” he said. “To release all our hostages, to bring about the destruction of Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities, and of course to ensure that Gaza will no longer be a threat to Israel.”
But even with those words, the fact that the negotiations are continuing at the current level means there is room for maneuver – room that Trump has made clear he wants to see left open – even if Smotrich and Ben-Gvir do not.
What Trump hasn’t made clear, however, is any public pressure on Netanyahu. If it is happening, it is taking place in the back rooms, far away from the cameras. In front of the cameras, as far as the cameras are permitted, the closeness of the alliance was on full display during this visit.
For instance, the mezuzah case in the shape of a B-2 bomber was more than a novelty. It was a thank-you for Fordow – and a reminder of the depth of strategic cooperation that enabled that mission.
Likewise, Netanyahu’s presentation to Trump of a letter he had written to the Norwegian Nobel Committee nominating the president for the Nobel Peace Prize – a nomination that came months after the application process had ended – was carefully thought out. It positioned Trump as a peacemaker, reinforcing a narrative that serves him well: the man who brokered the Abraham Accords, helped end Iran’s grip on the region, and is thereby forging a new Middle East.
PM's visit to Washington will not be remembered for fanfare in Israel
WHILE NETANYAHU spent the week in Washington, back in Israel the public mood was increasingly weary.
Support for the war’s overall goals remains strong, though there is continued skepticism whether defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages can be done simultaneously. Furthermore, the costs – the fallen soldiers, the hostages, the lingering trauma – are taking a toll.
Even the remarkable success of Operation Rising Lion has done little to lighten the emotional load. That’s because the October 7 trauma remains unresolved. And because the Israel-Hamas war, unlike the campaign against Iran, has no clear endgame.
The prime minister’s visit to Washington this week will not be remembered for fanfare. There was no joint announcement with the president of a new regional dawn. No memorable ceremonies. No dramatic sound bites.
But that does not mean the visit wasn’t significant.
The very absence of theatrics may say more than any press conference could. It hinted at hard choices ahead. It hinted at strategic bargains that may have already been made. And it hinted at the possibility – still out of reach – of a release of the hostages, a ceasefire, and a new diplomatic beginning.
Those outcomes didn’t materialize this week, but for the first time in a long time, they feel possible. And as the country waits, it’s worth returning to what Netanyahu told Fox News in his interview on Wednesday:
“President Wilson used to say, ‘I believe in open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.’ I have a slight change in that formula. I believe in open covenants, secretly arrived at. Whatever we can do in diplomacy, I think we should do discreetly, and then surprise people.”
The nation now waits to see what surprise – if any – might yet emerge from this low-key, high-stakes trip to Washington.