As part of his busy Thursday at the U.S. Capitol, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), the new chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a one-time volunteer for the Israel Defense Forces.
Mast told JNS that there was no need for him and Netanyahu to waste any time getting to know each other. “We toured hospitals together a year ago and met each other at other occasions,” Mast said of a December 2023 trip to Israel, during which he and the Israeli prime minister visited wounded Israeli soldiers.
Thursday’s meeting “was specifically to speak about very important issues—from what’s going on in the battle, as we speak, what’s going on with the hostages that are still being held, what needs to happen in the future, what’s going on with the proposal from President Trump to essentially rebuild Gaza into a different world than the Middle East has ever seen following peace,” Mast explained.
Earlier in the week, the congressman’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, ranking member Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), placed a pause on a $1 billion arms sale package to Israel, according to Mast. (Each of the “big four”—the chairman and ranking member of the Senate and House foreign relations panels—has the power to block high-dollar arms sales.)
JNS asked if any progress had been made on the paused sale during Netanyahu’s visit. Mast told JNS that he isn’t sure where Meeks stands “in terms of where to go forward.”
Mast and the committee can have a positive impact on Israel and the region in many other ways, he told JNS.
He cited the House-passed bill to sanction the International Criminal Court, a stand-alone court in The Hague that isn’t part of the United Nations, for issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the former Israeli defense minister. A companion bill is stuck in the Senate, having only garnered one Democratic vote from Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).
“That’s something that needs to be revisited,” Mast said.
Israel must have the tools it needs, so that neither Jerusalem nor the rest of the world “has to face a nuclear-armed Iran, or that they have the tools that they need to make sure that Hamas is completely destroyed,” Mast said.
The region can’t move on from the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, until there is a neighbor in Gaza “that’s willing to accept an independent and Jewish state without the idea that they’re somehow going to return and have no Jewish state, and that’s willing to put up their white flag of surrender following this genocide that they’ve conducted against Israel,” the congressman said.
‘Look at this situation in a holistic way’
Earlier in the day, the Trump administration announced its first round of sanctions against Iran, even as U.S. President Donald Trump said earlier in the week that he felt forced by some in his administration to sign an executive order announcing a return to the “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic.
Trump has said he prefers to try to make a deal with Tehran on its nuclear program before planning any type of preemptive military action.
Mast suggested that House Republicans, despite their generally hawkish nature on Iran, follow Trump’s lead.
“‘Maximum pressure’ is the term we used in the first administration for what took place with Iran,” he said. “There is a coalition to make sure that there will not be a strong Iran—a nuclear-armed Iran—starting with the sanctions that we put on them, making sure that they’re not transferring oil and other things to our adversaries, like China, and drones to Russia.”
JNS asked Mast if there is consensus among House Republicans on Trump’s announced strategy to clear Gaza of its population to make way for a revitalization of the decimated Strip, and for the United States to take it over.
“President Trump has given more details about how he can see this, but what he’s offering is common sense,” Mast said. “For anybody that’s been in an area like this, he’s looking at the situation.”
Mast said that includes the fact that Palestinians “were intertwined throughout their communities with terrorists—whether they were in their schools, whether they were in their hospitals, whether they were in the same buildings, just absolutely intertwined with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Lions Den, Fatah, you name it.”
Those terror groups include some based in Judea and Samaria, with Fatah serving as the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority.
“They have moved out of those areas because of the destruction of those terrorist groups that had to take place. So they are already relocated,” Mast said. “Where they return to, there’s not a bathroom, there’s not a stove, there’s not a grocery store, so they’re going to be somewhere else. Ultimately, you have to look at this situation in a holistic way.”
Syria was torn apart by years of civil war with millions of citizens fleeing the country and many Ukrainians moved to the western part of the country amid Russia’s invasion.
Mast told JNS that neither Egypt nor Jordan is allowing Palestinians in. “So you have to ask that question,” he said. “You have to find that willing partner that’s going to say they can go in there while the appropriate things take place to change the Middle East.”