WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put on pleasant faces and offered polite words on camera Thursday as they opened a meeting at the White House at a fraught moment in their relationship with the future of the Middle East on the line.

President Biden and Netanhayu Meet

The president smiled broadly and chatted amiably with Netanhayu in their first session together in the White House since Biden took office while the prime minister offered effusive words of praise for his service. But the brief bonhomie masked the deep tensions between them over the war in the Gaza Strip and U.S. efforts to broker a cease-fire.

“Well, welcome back, Mr. Prime Minister,” Biden said as the two sat down in the Oval Office. “We’ve got a lot to talk about. I think we should get to it.”

The president offered no thoughts about the situation on the ground while reporters were in the room and instead turned the floor over to Netanyahu, who used the opportunity to express gratitude now that Biden has dropped his bid for a second term and is winding up his long political career.

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“Mr. President, we’ve known each other for 40 years and you’ve known every Israeli prime minister for 50 years, from Golda Meir,” Netanyahu told him. “So 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. And I look forward to discussing with you today and working with you in the months ahead on the great issues before us.”

Biden grinned at the reference to him as an “Irish American Zionist” and then said he looked forward to their discussions as well. “By the way, that first meeting with Prime Minister Golda Meir, and she had an assistant sitting next to me, a guy named Rabin,” he said, referring to Yitzhak Rabin, who would later serve as prime minister himself. “That’s how far back it goes. I was only 12 then.”

Neither Address Their Disagreements Over Gaza

Neither man addressed their disagreements over the conduct of Israel’s war against Hamas in front of cameras, nor did they give any hint of the state of negotiations over a possible cease-fire agreement that would suspend and eventually end the war in exchange for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Biden has pressed Israel and Hamas to make a deal but even as Netanyahu has said he is willing to make an agreement if certain conditions are met, he has been reluctant to end the war without ensuring that Hamas can never repeat the terrorist attack it mounted Oct. 7.

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John Kirby, a White House spokesperson, said Biden planned to press Netanyahu to make the final concessions needed to seal a cease-fire. “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.

He said that the negotiators “are closer now, we believe, than we’ve been before” but that there were still gaps.

The meeting came a day after Netanyahu used an address to a joint meeting of Congress to denounce critics of Israel, particularly left-wing protesters he termed “useful idiots.” Police used pepper spray outside the Capitol to push back thousands of protesters, some of whom burned an American flag and marred statues with slogans including “Hamas is coming.”

A day later, protesters, kept at a distance from the White House by a new wall of fencing beyond the normal gates, shouted as Netanyahu arrived Thursday. Biden and Netanyahu planned to meet with families of Israeli hostages held by Hamas after their own session.

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Vice President Kamala Planned Meeting With Netanyahu

Vice President Kamala Harris planned to meet with Netanyahu separately later in the afternoon.

A lot of attention will be paid to how Harris handles the meeting now that she is the putative Democratic nominee and whether she varies at all from Biden’s line. Over the course of the last nine months, she has largely stuck close to the president’s position, although at times she has sounded more empathetic about the suffering in Gaza, leading some to conclude that she might not be as supportive of Netanyahu’s war as Biden has been.

Kirby acknowledged no differences between the president and vice president on Gaza. “She’s been a full partner in our policies in the Middle East,” he said.

As she sought to strike a balance, Harris even before her meeting with the prime minister condemned the “despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters” at anti-Israel demonstrations at Washington’s Union Station just a few blocks from the Capitol where Netanyahu was speaking.

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Hedging his bets, Netanyahu planned to fly to Florida to meet Friday with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate. But Trump may not offer the message the prime minister wants to hear. In an interview on Fox News on Thursday, the former president said that Israel should wrap up the war soon because it has yielded bad public relations for the country.

Israel should “finish up and get it done quickly,” Trump said, “because they are getting decimated with this publicity.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Peter Baker/Kenny Holston
c.2024 The New York Times Company