The Mar-a-Lago hotel/club/private residence is ready to, for the second consecutive day, attract all the attention of geopolitical experts with the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The president of the United States, host in Palm Beach (Florida), where he is spending his Christmas vacation, is scheduled to receive it at 1:00 p.m. (East Coast time, six more in mainland Spain) as he received on Sunday — in another confusion, usual for him, between public and private —
with whom three months ago he defined as “the best friend that Israel has had in the White House” with the mission of checking if he continues to be that way and with four objectives, as indicated by information leaks prior to the meeting. He wants permission to bomb Iran again if Tehran continues making missiles. He is seeking authorization to remain in the area of Syria that Israel has occupied militarily since last year. It aspires to Israeli control of more than half of the Strip based on daily attacks with Palestinian deaths. And he intends to force the disarmament of the weakened Hezbollah throughout Lebanon.
The meeting, the fifth in person between both leaders in 2025, occurs on the same day that Hamas confirmed the death last August of its spokesperson, Abu Obeida, and with Trump’s impatience with, which the United States imposed last October, and which has not yet moved on to its second phase. With the discomfort, also, of the White House with Israel’s actions in Lebanon and Syria.
Netanyahu — who spoke on Sunday by phone from Florida with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, back in Trump’s orbit — needs a conquest at Mar-a-Lago that will serve him well back home, while his criminal trial for bribery and fraud moves forward decisively and pressure from his base continues to carry out something that Trump has already warned him would be a problem. Furthermore, polls indicate that either things change or he will lose the elections in 2026 after three decades of being an unavoidable presence in his country’s politics.
Trump wants to announce progress in Gaza as soon as possible, if possible, before January 20 marks the first year since his return to the White House. During the campaign with which he won his ticket back to power, he then with that war on his first day in the Oval Office, and, although he failed to live up to that promise, he likes to boast that he has achieved “peace in the Middle East” for the first time, he usually exaggerates, “in thousands of years.”
This second phase involves a withdrawal of the Israeli invasion, and the creation of a Palestinian technocratic government. All of this, with the help of an international supervisory body and the deployment of an international force yet to be defined. Netanyahu wants things to continue as they are, with Israeli control of 58% of the Strip, in dire conditions that have worsened this month due to the rains.
As for Iran, the United States supported Israel in June, with the so-called “12-day war,” which crowned an attack by Washington on three uranium production and storage bases that dealt a blow to the nuclear program of the ayatollah regime. Trump sold that operation as an unprecedented military success and as the definitive solution to a problem that Netanyahu is not willing to consider resolved. This aspires to dismantle Tehran’s ballistic missile development program, taking advantage of the weakness of its old enemy: holed by sanctions, with less and less support in the region and in the middle of a phenomenal economic crisis.
Complete annihilation
A decision by Trump to collaborate on these plans would not only be a violation of international law; It would also be tantamount to admitting that in June he exaggerated when he repeatedly said that the military operation launched by Washington achieved the “complete annihilation” of the Iranian nuclear program.
The Republican also meets with Netanyahu at a delicate moment internally. Your unconditional support to (Make America Great Again), the base of its staunchest followers. On the one hand, led by the broadcaster Tucker Carlson or the conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, there are those who question the financing of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza, which is more difficult to justify among young people, also among conservatives, who access live and unfiltered information about the atrocities of the conflict through social networks. On the other, there are those who consider that siding with Israel will help the West in a supposed civilizing crusade against radical Islamism.
The president of the United States largely based his rise on the ideology contained in the slogan America First (America first). He promised that if he returned to the White House, wars abroad would be a thing of the past, although for now, a year later, the international scene (from Ukraine to Venezuela) has absorbed much of his attention. This has been demonstrated once again these days at Mar-a-Lago, and summarized on Sunday in a tweet from MAGA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Today, Zelensky. Tomorrow, Netanyahu. Can we focus on the United States?”
