Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu and U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump might look to take a vic­to­ry lap on Mon­day af­ter their re­cent joint strikes on Iran, hailed by both as an un­mit­i­gat­ed suc­cess.

But as they meet for the third time this year, the out­ward­ly tri­umphant vis­it will be dogged by Is­rael’s 21-month war against Hamas in Gaza and ques­tions over how hard Trump will push for an end to the con­flict.

Trump has made clear that fol­low­ing the 12-day war be­tween Is­rael and Iran, he would like to see the Gaza con­flict end soon. The meet­ing be­tween Trump and Ne­tanyahu could give new ur­gency to a U.S. cease­fire pro­pos­al be­ing dis­cussed by Is­rael and Hamas, but whether it leads to a deal that ends the war is un­clear.

“The op­tics will be very pos­i­tive,” said Michael Oren, a for­mer Is­raeli am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton. “But be­hind the vic­to­ry lap are go­ing to be some very se­ri­ous ques­tions.”

Be­fore de­part­ing for Wash­ing­ton on Sun­day, Ne­tanyahu praised the co­op­er­a­tion with the U.S. for bring­ing a “huge vic­to­ry over our shared en­e­my.” He struck a pos­i­tive note on a cease­fire for Gaza, say­ing he was work­ing “to achieve the deal un­der dis­cus­sion, on the terms we agreed to.”

The prime min­is­ter was sched­uled to hold sep­a­rate meet­ings on Mon­day with Trump en­voy Steve Witkoff and Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio be­fore a pri­vate din­ner with Trump. Ne­tanyahu is slat­ed to meet Tues­day with Re­pub­li­can House Speak­er Mike John­son.

“I think that the dis­cus­sion with Pres­i­dent Trump can cer­tain­ly help ad­vance that re­sult, which all of us hope for,” Ne­tanyahu said.

‘It changes from day to day’

Is­rael and Hamas ap­pear to be inch­ing to­ward a new cease­fire agree­ment that would bring about a 60-day pause in the fight­ing, send aid flood­ing in­to Gaza and free at least some of the re­main­ing 50 hostages held in the ter­ri­to­ry.

But a peren­ni­al stick­ing point is whether the cease­fire will end the war al­to­geth­er. Hamas has said it is will­ing to free all the hostages in ex­change for an end to the war and a full Is­raeli with­draw­al from Gaza. Ne­tanyahu says the war will end once Hamas sur­ren­ders, dis­arms and goes in­to ex­ile — some­thing it re­fus­es to do.

Trump has made it clear that he wants to be known as a peace­mak­er. He has re­peat­ed­ly trum­pet­ed re­cent peace deals that his ad­min­is­tra­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ed be­tween In­dia and Pak­istan, the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go and Rwan­da, and Is­rael and Iran, and for years has made lit­tle se­cret of the fact that he cov­ets a No­bel Peace Prize.

He has been pres­sur­ing Is­rael and Hamas to wrap up their own con­flict, which has killed tens of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans, rav­aged Gaza, deep­ened Is­rael’s in­ter­na­tion­al iso­la­tion and made any res­o­lu­tion to the broad­er con­flict be­tween Is­rael and the Pales­tini­ans more dis­tant than ever.

But the pre­cise de­tails of the deal, and whether it can lead to an end to the war, are still in flux. In the days be­fore Ne­tanyahu’s vis­it, Trump seemed to down­play the chances for a break­through.

Asked on Fri­day how con­fi­dent he was a cease­fire deal would come to­geth­er, Trump told re­porters: “I’m very op­ti­mistic — but you know, look, it changes from day to day.”

On Sun­day evening, he seemed to nar­row his ex­pec­ta­tion, telling re­porters that he thought an agree­ment re­lat­ed to the re­main­ing hostages would be reached in the com­ing week.

Trump and Ne­tanyahu are more in sync than ever

Those mood swings al­so have em­bod­ied Trump’s re­la­tion­ship with Ne­tanyahu.

Af­ter Trump’s de­ci­sion to get in­volved in Is­rael’s war in Iran with strikes on Iran­ian nu­clear sites, the two lead­ers are more in sync than ever. But that’s not al­ways been the case.

As re­cent­ly as Ne­tanyahu’s last vis­it to Wash­ing­ton in April, the tone was marked­ly dif­fer­ent.

Trump used the pho­to-op with Ne­tanyahu to an­nounce that the U.S. was en­ter­ing in­to ne­go­ti­a­tions with Iran over its nu­clear deal — ap­pear­ing to catch the Is­raeli leader off guard and at the time, slam­ming the brakes on any Is­raeli mil­i­tary plan.

He al­so praised Turk­ish leader Re­cep Tayyip Er­do­gan, a fierce crit­ic of Is­rael’s, in front of Ne­tanyahu, and the two made no ap­par­ent progress on a trade deal at the height of Trump’s tar­iff ex­pan­sion.

Trump, whose poli­cies have large­ly aligned with Is­rael’s own pri­or­i­ties, pledged last week to be “very firm” with Ne­tanyahu on end­ing the war, with­out say­ing what that would en­tail. Pres­sure by Trump has worked on Ne­tanyahu in the past, with a cease­fire deal hav­ing been reached right as the pres­i­dent was tak­ing of­fice again.

Ne­tanyahu has to bal­ance the de­mands of his Amer­i­can al­ly with the far-right par­ties in his gov­ern­ing coali­tion who hold the key to his po­lit­i­cal sur­vival and op­pose end­ing the war.

But giv­en the strong U.S. sup­port in Is­rael’s war against Iran, high­light­ed by joint airstrikes on a for­ti­fied un­der­ground Iran­ian nu­clear site, Ne­tanyahu may have a tough time say­ing no.

On Sun­day evening, Trump said one of the mat­ters he ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss with Ne­tanyahu “is prob­a­bly a per­ma­nent deal with Iran.”

Trump al­so may ex­pect some­thing in re­turn for his re­cent calls for Ne­tanyahu’s cor­rup­tion tri­al to be can­celed — a sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­fer­ence in the do­mes­tic af­fairs of a sov­er­eign state.

“Trump thinks that Ne­tanyahu owes him,” said Ey­tan Gilboa, an ex­pert on U.S.-Is­rael af­fairs at Bar-Ilan Uni­ver­si­ty near Tel Aviv. “And if Trump thinks that he needs to end the war In Gaza, then that is what he will need to do.”

Trump’s re­gion­al vi­sion

The two men will like­ly dis­cuss the cease­fire with Iran and how to re­spond to any per­ceived vi­o­la­tions.

Be­yond Iran is Trump’s grand vi­sion for a new Mid­dle East, where he hopes that ad­di­tion­al coun­tries will join the Abra­ham Ac­cords, a se­ries of agree­ments nor­mal­iz­ing re­la­tions be­tween Arab coun­tries and Is­rael bro­kered dur­ing Trump’s first term.

Ne­tanyahu and Trump are like­ly to dis­cuss how to bring Syr­ia in­to the fold. The coun­try, a long­time en­e­my of Is­rael’s, has new lead­er­ship af­ter the fall of Pres­i­dent Bashar As­sad, and ex­perts say con­di­tions might be ripe for some kind of non­bel­ligeren­cy agree­ment.

But Trump’s ul­ti­mate goal is to in­clude re­gion­al pow­er­house Sau­di Ara­bia.

The Saud­is, whose clout could open the door for oth­er Arab or Mus­lim coun­tries to join, have ex­pressed in­ter­est in nor­mal­iz­ing ties with Is­rael but on­ly if it is ac­com­pa­nied by se­ri­ous steps to­ward re­solv­ing Is­rael’s con­flict with the Pales­tini­ans. For starters, that would seem to re­quire ac­tion in Gaza.

“The most im­por­tant thing (for Trump) is to end the war in Gaza,” Gilboa said. “That is the key to all the re­gion­al peace in the Mid­dle East.”