President Donald Trump lit into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, underscoring his frustrations with the key ally’s continued military campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon even as he looks to sell a peace deal the U.S. negotiated with the group’s main benefactor, Iran.
“We have a little dispute over Lebanon,” he told reporters at a G7 press conference. “I say, ‘You can do a little softer touch, Bibi. You don’t have to knock down a building every time somebody walks into it that’s from Hezbollah.’”
Netanyahu, Trump said, “gets a little excited sometimes.”
“I’m not saying they shouldn’t protect themselves,” he said. “I’m saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don’t have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better, and frankly, they could do a better job.”
The president has spent the last several days meeting with global partners at the annual summit in Évian-les-Bains, France, promoting a memorandum of understanding he announced on Sunday to end a war with Iran that has dominated headlines — and roiled markets — since late February.
But on Wednesday, he took time to slam an ally perhaps less interested in an immediate peace than the White House. Israel’s strikes on Lebanon continued even after U.S. interlocutors reached their deal with Iran. That’s despite the fact that Iran says the memorandum is contingent on Israeli forces ending those hostilities, according to the Associated Press.
“I feel very bad for Lebanon,” Trump said. “Lebanon’s been, you know was a great culture. They had the professors, the doctors, the lawyers, it was an incredible culture, maybe the highest in the Middle East for years and years, centuries. And for the last 50, 60 years, they have been just trashed; they have been living in hell.”
The president has grown increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu in recent weeks, as peace talks between Washington and Tehran stalled and Israel continued to strike Hezbollah. He urged Netanyahu to stop in a furious phone call at the turn of the month and told the New York Post that “if there wasn’t me, there’d be no Israel right now” in an interview.
He projected confidence on Wednesday that the U.S. could still work with Israel to end the conflict, despite his implication that the campaign in Lebanon has been asymmetric.
“You have people living there, buildings are being dropped on top of them or right alongside of them,” Trump said of Lebanon. “How would you like to live there? It’s so unfair, especially Beirut.”
