PM Netanyahu spoke with CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper and General Patrick Frank, and was impressed by the joint Israel-US effort to advance and implement President Trump’s framework.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “I am pleased to host our American friends here in Kiryat Gat. They are working together with us on a plan to achieve a different Gaza, a Gaza that will no longer pose a threat to Israel.

“The first component, of course, is security, and the security responsibility for maintaining our forces and our freedom of action. This is an accepted matter, and we are doing it. It is important; it is a fundamental component.

“In the same measure, we want to bring it about that in the end, the goal that President Trump and we agreed on – the disarming of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza – will be achieved. We are working on this in stages, together with other components of the plan.

“I believe that through cooperation, we have already done things that have astounded the world – both in Iran and in the release of our live hostages, in which no one believed we would succeed.

“There is a real joint effort here, while keeping security in our hands, to achieve results that perhaps no one believed we would achieve; we want to try.

“President Donald Trump said it simply:  Either we achieve this the easy way, as we hope, or we will have to achieve it the hard way, but we will achieve what we are looking to achieve.”