Trump says he has not spoken to Netanyahu since late July

WASHINGTON

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Thursday that he has not spoken to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since late July.

"I expect I might be talking to him, but I haven't since then," he said at a news conference in Bedminster, New Jersey.

His remarks came after some reports claimed that Trump and Netanyahu held a phone call Wednesday to discuss a Gaza hostage and cease-fire deal.

Netanyahu's office also said in a statement Thursday that he did not speak with Trump on the matter.

Trump said he had a two-and-a-half-hour-long meeting with Netanyahu at his Mar-a-Lago estate in the state of Florida on July 26.

The meeting came a day after Netanyahu met separately with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the capital, Washington, D.C., where he delivered a controversial speech to the US Congress, claiming that a commander in the southern city of Rafah in Gaza told him there were practically no civilian deaths there.

Asked whether he encouraged Netanyahu to accept a cease-fire deal, Trump said: "No, I didn't encourage him. You know, he knows what he's doing. I did encourage him to get this over with…But have victory, get your victory, and get it over with. It has to stop. The killing has to stop."

Israel, flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack last year by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

The Israeli onslaught has since killed more than 40,000 people, mostly women and children, and injured over 92,400, according to local health authorities.

More than 10 months into the Israeli onslaught, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.