Trump urged Netanyahu in Thursday call to move Gaza plan forward after vote

US President Donald Trump used a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday to press him to start implementing the American peace plan for Gaza, now that Israel's election campaign has ended. The Times of Israel relayed the account from Israel's Channel 12, which attributed it to two American sources with knowledge of the call.

Barak Ravid, a correspondent for the US outlet Axios, reported the same conversation as a scoop. In a Hebrew post on X, he wrote that Trump's message to Netanyahu was, in substance, that the vote was behind them and it was time to move ahead with carrying out the plan, and pointed readers to his story on N12, Channel 12's news site. In a separate English post he described Trump as asking Netanyahu to move on the plan during a post-election call, linking to his Axios article.

What the Gaza plan asks for

According to the Times of Israel summary, the Washington plan has two central elements: Hamas, the Islamist movement that has ruled Gaza, must give up its weapons, and control of the territory is to pass to a Palestinian government made up of technocrats rather than political factions. The same report says a senior US official told Channel 12 that rebuilding Gaza would depend on progress toward disarming Hamas, and that the United States needs Israel's full cooperation. The official did not say how much disarmament would be enough before reconstruction could begin.

Why the plan stalled during the campaign

The Times of Israel report describes implementation as having been effectively on hold while Israel was campaigning. Many officials, it said, pointed to the domestic political cost Netanyahu's government would have faced if it had permitted any rebuilding in Gaza while Hamas still held its arms. For an Israeli government seeking votes, allowing reconstruction under those conditions would have been an exposed position, and the plan sat largely untouched as a result.

The report also notes that Trump had endorsed Netanyahu for reelection. According to Channel 12, as relayed by the Times of Israel, Trump now wants movement on the plan whatever government ends up being formed in Israel. That framing matters because Israeli election results are not the end of the process: a prime minister must assemble a coalition in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, before a government takes office, and that bargaining can take weeks.

Who reported it, and how

Channel 12 is one of Israel's main commercial television news channels, and N12 is its online news brand. Ravid works for both Axios in Washington and Channel 12 in Israel, which is why his posts point to stories at each outlet. The Times of Israel did not report the call independently; it cited Channel 12. In practice, then, the accounts available here trace back to Ravid's reporting at Channel 12 and Axios, built on unnamed American sources, with the Times of Israel carrying the Channel 12 version for English readers.

The accounts are consistent with one another. Both describe a call on Thursday, both place it after the election, and both present Trump as the one pushing for action on Gaza. The Times of Israel version adds the detail about reconstruction being tied to disarmament and the line that Washington wants progress regardless of the coalition outcome.

The situation on the ground

The Times of Israel item ran with a photograph of Palestinians beside tents at a camp for displaced people in the central Gaza Strip, dated October 24, 2026, a reminder that large numbers of Gazans remain displaced while the question of reconstruction is unresolved.

What the reports do not say

None of the reports gives Netanyahu's reply to Trump, and no response from the Prime Minister's Office or the White House has been reported. The senior US official did not define what level of Hamas disarmament would unlock reconstruction. The reports also do not set out any timetable, or say which specific steps Washington expects Israel to take first.