Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ended his visit to Washington on Saturday by appearing on Fox News, repeating his denunciations of the previous US administration that he had repeated everywhere (during his visit) to please and curry favor with the administration of US President Donald Trump, despite the Biden administration’s full support for him and Israel, enabling them to continue a war of extermination of defenseless civilians in Gaza, unparalleled in the twenty-first century.

Netanyahu also spoke admiringly on American television about Trump's plan to take over Gaza as "the first new idea in years" regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu insisted during his meetings with President Trump, Republican lawmakers, and influential leaders who share his right-wing racist ideology that Trump was finally correcting the course of the relationship between the United States and Israel after the actions of former President Joe Biden, in order to create a difference in positions between him and the Biden administration, which provided him with $28 billion in weapons, and to create a difference, or a disagreement (or a space between positions, as the American proverb says) between Biden and Israel, in denial of the reality of Biden’s position and his administration from October 7, 2023, until his departure from the White House, on January 20, 2025, which Netanyahu himself acknowledged, saying: “Biden has acted as Israel’s most important supporter in history.”

Netanyahu’s eager praise of Trump is, on the one hand, the necessary self-adulation required of any world leader trying to stay in President Trump’s good graces, and on the other hand, “also serves as Netanyahu’s down payment as a thank-you for Trump’s stunning plan for the mass exodus of Palestinians and the American takeover of Gaza,” according to an article in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper.

Netanyahu left Washington with a variety of actions and Trump gifts to show off to the Israeli far right: Trump executive orders on UNRWA; the International Criminal Court; the announcement of $7 billion in arms sales (although they were approved by Biden); and a recommitment to maximum pressure on Iran—all while bypassing any pesky congressional barriers.

Moreover, according to experts, Netanyahu is clearly encouraged by Trump casting doubt on the feasibility of a Gaza ceasefire and diverting the world’s attention away from the dozens of Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza, and toward the horrific Gaza plan — which leaves far more questions than answers, even after attempts at clarification by the president and senior U.S. officials, especially given Trump’s repeated insistence on his plan to take over Gaza and turn it into the Middle East Riviera.

While Netanyahu and his allies are touting Trump’s plan to seize Gaza as the immediate achievement of the Washington visit (and meeting with Trump), the real prize could come in the near future, according to speculation. In the hours before Netanyahu arrived, Trump responded to a question about annexing the occupied West Bank by comparing Israel’s standing in the Middle East to the point of a pen on his desk. Asked later alongside Netanyahu, Trump said “people love the idea” of annexation and “we’ll be announcing it in the next four weeks.” Trump is widely expected to announce that he will drop the term “West Bank” in official US discourse, and instead use “Judea and Samaria.”

“The hope of changing the name of the West Bank to Judea and Samaria is to normalize settlement and make it a permanent reality, and to facilitate the process of annexing the West Bank, according to the Deal of the Century plan that President Trump launched at the White House in January 2020 (which gives Israel 33% of the occupied West Bank, including the Jordan Valley),” a former official in the previous Trump administration told Jerusalem on condition of anonymity.

While Trump’s reference to annexing the West Bank, “Little Israel,” may have been lost in the uproar and shock over the Gaza takeover, a quick glance at the calendar shows that four weeks after that meeting, Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address to Congress, and he may use that as a platform to outline his plans to annex the West Bank.

Trump is expected to use his Gaza plan as leverage with Jordan’s King Abdullah, who is due in Washington this week and will meet Trump on Feb. 11 in the hope of avoiding another diplomatic disaster. If Abdullah refuses to accept Palestinians from Gaza and the ceasefire collapses, Trump could use the resumption of U.S. aid to Jordan as a carrot and annexation as a stick.

In Trump's latest blunder, the US president pledged on Sunday to buy and own Gaza, and said he might give parts of it to other countries in the Middle East to help rebuild it.

Trump said that "countries in the Middle East will accept the Palestinians after those countries talked to him." He repeated his talk about Gaza, saying that he would "turn it into a good place for future development." He added: "I will take care of the Palestinians, and I will make sure that they are not killed," knowing that no one knows how the deal to buy and sell the devastated Strip will be done.

Experts believe that no matter how Trump’s plans end, Netanyahu has arrived in Israel feeling more comfortable than ever, and more confident than ever that he has secured his political survival. Miriam Adelson, who donated $200 million to Trump during his pregnancy and has significant influence over Trump, was rumored to be leaning toward the return of Naftali Bennett as prime minister in Israel, but has now abandoned the idea.