Below is the full text of the statement delivered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu alongside U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on April 7, 2025:
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Donald.
I want to first thank you for inviting me again to the White House. You’ve been a remarkable friend of the State of Israel. You stand by us, you’re standing with us, you’re a great, great champion of our alliance and you actually do things that you say you do. And I think people respect that enormously. I certainly do, and the people of Israel do, and I think the Jewish people do as well.
We just saw your representative at the Department of Justice fighting antisemitism, standing up for Israel in international forums. I just want you to know from the heart that it’s deeply appreciated.
As you said, we had the opportunity to talk today about many subjects. First, if I can mention tariffs; it’s the subject of some interest today. I can tell you that I said to the president a very simple thing, “We will eliminate the trade deficit with the United States.” We intend to do it very quickly. We think it’s the right thing to do.
We’re going to also eliminate trade barriers, a variety of trade barriers that have been put up unnecessarily. I think Israel can serve as a model for many countries who ought to do the same.
I recognize the position of the United States. It says, you know, we’re allowing other countries to put tariffs on us, but we don’t put tariffs on them. And, you know, I’m a free trade champion but free trade has to be fair trade. And I think that’s basically the position that you have put forward, Mr. President. We are going to eliminate the tariffs and rapidly.
I had the opportunity to speak to [U.S. Commerce] Secretary [Howard] Lutnick yesterday. We talked about how we could affect this quickly, and I hope to bring a solution very quickly. We’re not talking about intentions, we’re not talking about, you know, just words. We’re talking about results. And those results are going to come fast.
We spoke about Gaza. The hostages is obviously a human story of just unbearable agony. I speak to the families. I spoke to them yesterday. I spoke to another one when I was in Hungary before I came here. I speak to them every day, and they’re in agony. The hostages are in agony, and we want to get them out.
Steve Witkoff, who is President Trump’s very able representative, helped us get a deal that got 25 out. We’re working now on another deal that we hope will succeed.
We’re committed to getting all the hostages out, but also eliminating the evil tyranny of Hamas in Gaza and enabling the people of Gaza to freely make a choice to go wherever they want. I mean, they should have that choice.
And the president put forward a vision, a bold vision, which we discussed as well, including the countries that might be amenable and are amenable to accepting Palestinians ... have their free choice if they choose to go there. That’s the second thing that we discussed, but the hostages came right on top.
We also discussed the situation in Syria. We have ... we’ve had neighborly relations with Turkey that have deteriorated, and we don’t want to see Syria being used by anyone, including Turkey, as a base for attack against Israel.
Turkey is a country that has a great relationship with the United States. The president has a relationship with the leader of Turkey. We discussed how we can avoid this conflict in a variety of ways, and I think we can’t have a better interlocutor than the president of the United States for this purpose.
Of course, we also discussed Iran. Look, we’re both united in the goal that Iran does not ever get nuclear weapons. If it can be done diplomatically in a full way, the way that it was done in Libya, I think that would be a good thing. But whatever happens, we have to make sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.
