Biden, Netanyahu expected to meet later this month in Washington, source says

By MJ Lee, CNN

(CNN) — President Joe Biden and Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to meet in Washington, DC, in a few weeks when the Israeli prime minister addresses Congress on July 24, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

U.S. and Israeli officials are still finalizing logistical details for the Biden-Netanyahu meeting, which will likely be held at the White House, the source said. The two leaders will meet, barring any sudden last-minute changes.

A White House official told CNN that Biden has known Netanyahu for decades and that they “will likely see each other when the prime minister is here later this week. But we have nothing to announce at this time.”

CNN has also contacted the prime minister’s office for comment.

This month’s meeting would come as a ceasefire and hostage-taking deal in the war between Israel and Hamas remains deadlocked, and tensions between Biden and Netanyahu have escalated in recent months, with the United States growing frustrated with Israel’s conduct of the war, including its failure to protect civilians.

Netanyahu said last week that he was still “committed” to Biden’s May ceasefire and hostage release proposal, which sets out conditions intended to lead to the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. The prime minister had faced backlash after initially saying he would accept “a partial deal.”

Biden and Netanyahu have spoken regularly by phone since the Hamas attacks on October 7, and their last in-person meeting was when the president visited Tel Aviv in the days after the brutal attack. The president has been increasingly willing to share his impatience and criticism publicly.

Last month, Biden said in an interview that Netanyahu could prolong the war to try to cling to power and said it was “uncertain” that Israel had committed war crimes.

More recently, Netanyahu sparked intense frustration in Washington when he publicly said the Biden administration was “holding back its guns” in a video posted to X, saying Secretary of State Antony Blinken “assured me that the administration is working around the clock to eliminate these bottlenecks.”

CNN reported that US envoy Amos Hochstein responded to Netanyahu that the prime minister’s comments were “unproductive” and “more importantly, completely false,” and that US officials reviewed a line-by-line explanation of hundreds of US weapons shipments to Israel with the country’s defense minister in an effort to refute Netanyahu’s claims.

CNN’s Jack Forrest, Christian Edwards, Tara John, Kevin Liptak, Natasha Bertrand, Arlette Saenz, Jennifer Hansler, Kylie Atwood, Melanie Zanona, Oren Liebermann and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn contributed to this report.