White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused on Thursday to confirm the location of the meeting between President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later this year, after Netanyahu toldABC in an interview that Biden had invited him to the White House for a meeting this fall, possibly as early as September.
“What I can say is they both agreed to meet in the United States later this year. Both teams are working through what that’s going to look like, the timing. I don’t have anything else to share beyond that, beyond what I — we have said last week and continue to say after that conversation is that they both agreed to meet in the United States later this year,” Jean-Pierre replied when asked by a reporter about the meeting in her daily press briefing.
She was then asked if Biden did not invite Netanyahu specifically to the White House and replied, “I just want to be very clear: It was a conversation that they both agreed that it would be in the United States. Don’t have anything further.”
Jean-Pierre also said that “both teams are having that conversation on what [the meeting] would look like.”
Netanyahu and Biden spoke on the phone last week. Following the call, The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement that Biden invited Netanyahu to an upcoming meeting in the US, adding that Netanyahu “responded positively to the invitation and it was agreed that the Israeli and US teams would coordinate the details of the meeting.”
A White House statement on the conversation did not mention a potential meeting between Netanyahu and Biden, who has notably not invited Netanyahu to the White House for a meeting since the latter's reelection as Prime Minister last year.
Asked later about a possible meeting between Netanyahu and Biden, John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications for the US National Security Council, said that a meeting will take place “probably before the end of this year”.
“They have agreed that that they will meet, probably before the end of this year, and all the details of the wheres and the whens are still being worked out,” he stated.