A day before his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, US President Donald Trump referred to Israel as a “small country” when asked if he would support Israeli annexation of the West Bank.

"I'm not going to talk about that," Trump said when asked by a reporter about the issue. "It's certainly a small country, it's a small country in terms of area."

“See that pen?” he continued, holding up the pen he used to sign executive orders in his Oval Office to compare the size of Israel to the rest of the Middle East. “This beautiful pen on my desk is the Middle East, and the tip of that pen is Israel.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held talks with US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in Washington on Monday about the second phase of the ceasefire negotiations, before deciding to send a negotiating delegation to begin talks with mediators.

The agreement stipulates that talks on the second phase will begin on the 16th day of the first phase, which fell on Monday.

Netanyahu will meet with US President Donald Trump on Tuesday to discuss the Gaza files, the Iranian nuclear issue, the possibility of expanding settlements and perhaps annexing the West Bank, and expanding the circle of relations between Israel and Arab countries.

Prime Minister Netanyahu is expected to meet with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegsett on Wednesday.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, quoting a source accompanying Netanyahu on his trip to Washington, that the latter seeks, through his meeting with Trump, to "obtain full American support to continue eliminating Hamas," without specifying what he means by that.

The newspaper pointed out that Israel "may not commit in the second stage to a complete withdrawal from Gaza and the Philadelphi corridor, without achieving this goal" which it was unable to achieve over more than 15 months of a devastating Israeli war considered one of the most ferocious, criminal, and genocidal against the Palestinians.

She added that Israeli officials "aim for the negotiations in the second phase to lead to expanding the normalization process between Israel and countries in the region."