Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to meet US President Joe Biden in Washington on Monday, two days before he is scheduled to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress.
It will mark his first trip to Washington since he was sworn into office in December 2022, but his third meeting with the president since that time.
Netanyahu spoke with Biden during a face-to-face meeting in New York in September 2023, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, and again when Biden visited Israel in October after the Hamas-led invasion of the country on October 7.
Trouble in paradise: US-Israeli relations suffer
The two men have been friends for over 40 years, but tensions have been high between them due initially to Biden’s opposition to Netanyahu’s judicial reform program and then to aspects of his handling of the Gaza war.
This includes US complaints regarding Israel’s handling of the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid into Gaza, the absence of a clear plan for the “day after” Hamas control of the enclave, and the civilian casualty count for the war, which Hamas has reported to be over 38,000.
Israel has said that at least 14,000 of those deaths are combatants.
The two men also had a very public dispute over the pace of the flow of arms to Israel for its war in Gaza, with Netanyahu publicly criticizing the Biden administration.
Biden, however, has also been one of Israel’s staunched international allies during the course of the war and has led efforts to secure a deal for the release of the 120 hostages.
The US army, along with those of Israel, Jordan, the United Kingdom, and France took to the skies in April to protect the Jewish state against an Iranian drone and missile attack.
National Security Adviser and National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer will be in the White House this week to hold talks within the framework of the Strategic Dialogue Forum between the US and Israel.