President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel presented a united front on Monday, papering over their differences on how to carry out the Gaza peace plan while heaping praise on each other.

The two leaders, who met over a multicourse lunch inside the dining room of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Florida, shared few details on the substance of their talks or how they planned to resolve the many outstanding issues between them.

Nor did they shed light on how Trump’s Gaza plan is to advance into its next phase, in which Hamas is supposed to disarm, the Israelis are supposed to pull back their forces and other countries are supposed to commit troops to an “international stabilisation force”.

But Trump did make at least one commitment. He said that the US would back Israeli strikes on Iran if Iran continued with its ballistic missile and nuclear weapon programme. The President said he has heard Iran is “behaving badly” and looking to restart its nuclear programme, but he declined to provide additional details.

For Trump, the meeting was an opportunity to take another victory lap for orchestrating the Gaza ceasefire, however tenuous it may be — he repeatedly overstated it as “peace in the Middle East”. And Netanyahu departed with fresh footage of Trump lauding him as Israel’s saviour, which will no doubt prove useful in the Israeli leader’s re-election campaign.

“You needed a very special man to really carry through and really help Israel through this horrible jam,” Trump said of Netanyahu.

Trump and Netanyahu mostly sidestepped questions about the next steps of the Gaza peace plan.

Putin N-talks

Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed Iran’s nuclear programme with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in a phone call, the Kremlin press-service said on Tuesday.

New York Times News Service