Netanyahu Pushes Renewed Attacks on Iran in Meeting With Trump

We speak to journalists Gideon Levy and Rami Khouri about President Trump’s meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, where Trump supported Israel’s threats to launch new attacks on Iran and warned Hamas to disarm during the second stage of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement. Khouri, a Palestinian American journalist, called the meeting a “continuation of the American-Israeli drive, that’s been going on for some years now, to reconfigure the Middle East … into a new colonial arrangement, whereby the U.S. and Israel dominate what goes on in the region.” Levy, Israeli journalist for Haaretz, called the meeting an “embarrassment,” noting that “Donald Trump presents himself as someone who promises the sky, who has no demands from Israel whatsoever.”

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with President Trump’s meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump expressed support for Israel’s threats to launch new attacks on Iran, as Netanyahu claims Iran is rebuilding its nuclear industries following U.S. and Israeli attacks last summer.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again. And if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down. We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them. But hopefully that’s not happening. I heard Iran wants to make a deal. If they want to make a deal, that’s much smarter.

AMY GOODMAN: Separately, Trump warned Hamas to disarm during the upcoming second stage of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire agreement, even as Israel has repeatedly violated the truce with near-daily attacks on Gaza.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, we talked about Hamas, and we talked about disarmament. And they’re going to be given a very short period of time to disarm, and we’ll see how that works out. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will be in charge of that from our side. But if they don’t disarm, as they agreed to do — they agreed to it — then there will be hell to pay for them.

AMY GOODMAN: President Trump also claimed he recently spoke to Israeli President Isaac Herzog about pardoning Netanyahu, who faces charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases in Israel. Trump said Herzog promised a pardon, quote, “is on its way,” though Herzog’s office later denied the claim.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu announced Trump would become the first non-Israeli to receive the Israel Prize, the nation’s highest civilian award. The announcement came as Trump was caught on a hot mic complaining to Netanyahu he’d been denied a Nobel Peace Prize.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. In Tel Aviv, Gideon Levy is with us, an award-winning Israeli journalist, author and columnist for the newspaper Haaretz and a member of its editorial board. His latest book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. And in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we’re joined by Rami Khouri, Palestinian American journalist, distinguished public policy fellow at the American University of Beirut. He’s also a nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Rami Khouri, let’s begin with you. Talk about the significance of this Mar-a-Lago meeting, that dealt with everything from the U.S. saying they’d support again a strike on Iran to saying Hamas must disarm before the second stage of a truce.

RAMI KHOURI: Well, the significance of the meeting is that it reconfirmed most of the fears that most people around the world have about what the U.S. and Israel are actually doing or planning in Gaza, the rest of Palestine and the wider Middle East. There were very, very few, if any, specifics at all of the plans ahead for a so-called phase two of the Trump-Netanyahu plan. Phase one has not been implemented fully.

Almost every statement that Trump and Netanyahu made was either inaccurate or a deliberate lie or vague or irrelevant or warmongering — threats, sanctions, “We’re going to beat the hell out of them.” It was quite an extraordinary performance of two men who are known for their love of warfare and bravado, tough guy talking, and they performed almost like cartoon characters. “We’re going to beat the hell out of them if they don’t do this,” they’re gonna this and that, and with very, very few, if any — really no specifics whatsoever.

And this is the concern that most people have, that what this tells us or suggests, that this situation is a continuation of the American-Israeli drive, that’s been going on for some years now, to reconfigure the Middle East, at least the Levant-West Asia part, into a new colonial arrangement, whereby the U.S. and Israel dominate what goes on in the region, they give orders to everybody, and they set the rules, and they grab whatever territory they want — if they want to make a resort, if they want to make an Israeli Zionist colonial settlement, if they want to set up a military base, that they can do anything they want.

It was really quite depressing, but also a very, very accurate reflection of and culmination of a century of Zionist and Israeli linkages with Western colonial powers — the British and then the Americans — in dominating this region and playing with it like they’re — they were, like, playing a game that was a combination of Monopoly and Risk, that you move people around, you buy this, you set up a hotel, a beach resort here, an investment there. It was quite distressing, but an accurate reflection of where we are in the world.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Rami Khouri, during the press conference, Trump claimed that Israel was abiding by the ceasefire, despite the fact that over 400 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire was agreed to. Your response to this claim?

RAMI KHOURI: Well, this is a reflection of what I said, that almost every statement that Trump or Netanyahu made is either an outright lie or an exaggeration or a diversion. It’s not accurate. It’s not the truth. The truth is that maybe 10, 15% of what they agreed on in the phase one of the plan has been implemented.

The Israelis are killing, bombing, attacking, starving. They now have a new weapon, which is to freeze babies to death. Palestinian babies are dying by freezing, 1-year-old — 1-week-old, 2-week-old babies. And this follows the last two years, where Israel has killed Palestinian babies in Gaza with starvation, with bomb attacks, with fires, with lack of medicine, lack of water, lack of food. It’s unbelievable what is happening. And it’s continuing.

And this is part of the problem, that the American president, at least for now — we don’t know if his position is going to stick. He’s very erratic, mercurial. He could change, and maybe there’s stuff going on behind the scenes that we don’t know. But from what he says, he is fully supporting whatever Israel wants to do in continuing its genocide, and possibly even following Israel into Syria, Lebanon and Iran.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I also wanted to ask you — in flying to the United States, Netanyahu’s aircraft, according to flight tracking data, crossed Greek, Italian and French airspace. All three of those nations are signatories to the Rome Statute, which obliged them to arrest Netanyahu because of his outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Your response to this failure of these European countries to act?

RAMI KHOURI: Well, this raises another really important and distressing factor or issue that’s going on now, has been for some years, which is the Israeli-driven American collusion in shredding not just Palestinian babies and tents and homes in Palestine, but shredding international law and existing conventions on war crimes, human rights, sovereignty. So, the Israelis basically say, “We don’t — these rules of law, rules of war, the International Criminal Court, all these things, they don’t apply to Israel. We’re exempt from all this.” And the Americans seem — the president, at least, seems to go along with this.

And this is troubling, but it’s a sign that the Arab-Israeli or the Palestinian-Zionist conflict is now expanding, because Israel is pushing policies all around the world that protect it and favor it, and are now impinging on fundamental rights, not only of states around the world, but individual rights. For instance, in the U.S., it’s very difficult to teach a course on Palestinian-Israeli history or Palestinian resistance, as it used to be very routine, but now you can’t do it. So, public libraries are being restricted in what they can do. Media is being restricted to a large extent, the mainstream media. And this is one of — this is another factor, that law doesn’t matter anymore. We’re into a lawless world, which is really taking us into the new phase of colonialism, as I described it.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s bring Gideon Levy into this conversation, the award-winning Israeli journalist on the board, editorial board, of the newspaper Haaretz. Can you talk about the significance of this meeting at Mar-a-Lago, Netanyahu’s fifth, what it means with the threat to Hamas, and then also this whole issue of Trump saying he spoke to the Israeli president, he’s going to be giving Netanyahu a pardon, and then the president’s office in Israel saying that wasn’t true?

GIDEON LEVY: It’s very hard, Amy, to speak about the significance of a meeting in which what you got was only warm air, all kind of cliches, all kind of threats, things which are — as Rami rightly said, things which are totally disconnected with reality. And you don’t know — you don’t know to find yourself there. I would agree almost to everything that Rami said, except of one thing: It was not a two-man show. In this case, it was a one-man show, because Netanyahu was absent yesterday. It was all about Donald Trump.

And Donald Trump presents himself as someone who promises the sky, who has no demands from Israel whatsoever. This was really outrageous. “They should do this, and they should do this, and they should do this.” And the country that slaughtered 20,000, 30,000 children in Gaza has no accountability for anything, in Israel. And there are not — at least at the press conference, there are not special requirements from this country. It’s all requirements from all the other actors. And this, by itself, is outrageous.

And then comes another point, obviously, that by the end of the day, they come in — they are coming from two different schools, because for Trump now, the most important thing is to get a deal. No matter how, no matter what, he wants to see deals. For Netanyahu, the main strategic goal is to continue in all four fronts, to continue to fight, not to put an end to any of the disputes there, neither in Lebanon, nor in Syria, nor in Iran, and obviously not in Gaza. Trump doesn’t speak about a redeployment and taking out the Israeli troops from Gaza. I mean, that’s a core issue. What about it? It’s even not mentioned. Who cares if the Israeli army will stay there or not? This is something marginal.

And then came, obviously, this unbelievable intervention in a sovereign other country, in the legal system of a sovereign other country. A journalist, not really a journalist, but a spokesperson for Netanyahu, raised the question about the pardon, I mean, by chance, obviously. And here he is back, Donald Trump calling to pardon Netanyahu, intervention in the legal system in the middle of a legal procedure in another country, spreading also — I don’t want to say “lies,” but President Herzog denied that he spoke with Donald Trump after he got his letter. So, in any case, it was embarrassing. I think the most accurate way to describe yesterday’s conference, press conference, was embarrassment.

AMY GOODMAN: I also wanted to ask you, Gideon, about Israel becoming the first country in the world to recognize Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia, as an independent state, coming as other countries refuse to recognize it. And today, large protests took place across Somalia. This is Somalia’s U.N. Ambassador Abu Bakr Dahir Osman addressing the U.N. Security Council Monday during a special meeting on the issue.

ABU BAKR DAHIR OSMAN: A3+ unequivocally reject any steps aimed at advancing this objective, including any attempt by Israel to relocate the Palestinian population from Gaza to northwestern region of Somalia. This action is not only unlawful, but it’s morally reprehensible.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Gideon Levy of Haaretz, can you talk about the significance of Israel becoming the sole nation to recognize Somaliland, and this reference to using it to — for Palestinians to be sent there?

GIDEON LEVY: It’s funny and ironic that the only country in the world, except of the United States, which opposes any kind of recognition in a Palestinian state, in the rights of the Palestinian people, and so forth and so forth, is now the only country which recognized some other entity which nobody knows exactly to describe, nobody knows exactly what is the nature of this country and where are they aiming. Israel, as a pariah state, is functioning in recent years with total ignoring of the international community. No matter what the international community says, no matter what are the resolutions, Israel is playing as if it is the only international actor.