According to an Israeli official, Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a golden pager – in a nod to the attack that exploded hundreds of the devices belonging to Hezbollah operatives.
That attack, carried out in September last year, wounded thousands of people and killed at least nine, and came as fighting between Israel and the Lebanese militant group was escalating.
Netanyahu, who is in Washington this week for talks with Trump, spent five hours with the president during his visit, which included a dinner and tour of the White House, the official added.
While receiving the gift, the official said Trump responded: “That was a major operation.”
We only have one homeland’, says Palestinian ambassador in rebuke to Trump
Donald Trump’s idea to resettle Gazans elsewhere is “about the erasure of Palestine”.
That’s according to Palestine’s ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, who told Sky News presenter Jayne Secker he was disappointed by Trump’s “one-sided” approach to the conflict.
“It just tells you all you need to know for the last 100 years,” he said.
“This is about the erasure of Palestine. And the centre of that erasure is the ethnic cleansing.”
He said most Gazans are from towns already “ethnically cleansed” by Israel.
But, he said, their determination to stay in the territory despite Israel’s bombardment reducing much of the area to rubble – described by Zomlot as genocide, a term Israel rejects – shows they “shall remain”.
“So if they have been tested via genocide and they remained on their home, that sideshow in Washington will not change the course of history,” he said.
“We shall remain.”
The future, he said, is about “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” and “establishing a state of Palestine”.
“Can I stress the right of return – if people from Gaza will go anywhere later, it will be back to their original homes inside the 48 areas [areas seized by Israel in 1948], not anywhere else,” he added.
“We only have one homeland – that is Palestine.”
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