Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Pete Hegseth, the newly installed U.S. secretary of defense, spoke on Sunday about the “unbreakable bond that exists between the United States and Israel,” a senior U.S. defense official stated.
A Pentagon readout states that the two men “discussed the importance of advancing mutual security interests and priorities, especially in the face of persistent threats.” Hegseth stressed that the United States “is fully committed, under President [Donald] Trump’s leadership, to ensuring that Israel has the capabilities it needs to defend itself. “
Netanyahu congratulated Hegseth on his appointment, and the U.S. secretary “noted his many years of support for the State of Israel and his friendship with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” according to an Israeli readout of the call.
Hegseth “promised that the United States would stand shoulder to shoulder alongside Israel and was fully committed to its security,” the Israeli government said.
MK Avigdor Liberman, a former Israeli defense minister who leads the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu Party, told JNS on Monday afternoon that “it is good that there is a new [U.S.] government that will also release to us those weapons that were promised by the previous government.”
On Saturday, Trump announced that he had lifted restrictions imposed by the Biden administration on sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
Asked about Trump’s call over the weekend for Arab countries to take in Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, Liberman said Jerusalem first needs to return all remaining 90 hostages held by Hamas in the enclave before “settling the score with all those responsible for the massacre on Oct. 7,” 2023.
“It can’t be that any of those terrorists, that even one of them, will die a natural death,” Liberman said during a Yisrael Beiteinu faction meeting at the Knesset. “But let’s first recover our hostages, and then we will settle accounts.”
