US President Donald Trump invited Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet at the White House later this month, the Israeli leader said at a Tuesday press conference in Jerusalem, while warning Hamas against harming hostages as the military operates in Gaza City.

According to Netanyahu, the visit will take place on September 29, three days after the premier’s scheduled address at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Netanyahu announced the meeting during a press conference focusing on the state of Israel’s economy after he faced intense criticism for saying a day earlier that the country would need to become increasingly self-reliant.

Netanyahu said the invitation came during a phone call on Monday, adding that he has held several conversations with Trump since Israel’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar, and all of them were “good.”

This would be the fourth meeting between the leaders in the White House since Trump’s second term began in January.

It would come amid US backing for Israel’s major offensive in Gaza City, which kicked off early Tuesday as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio took off for Qatar.

During the trip, Rubio showed firm support for Israel, saying that the “ideal outcome” is for Hamas to simply surrender, but “it may require ultimately a concise military operation to eliminate them.”

He chose not to add to international criticism of Israel for its strike on Hamas leaders in Doha last week, saying on Monday, “We are focused on what happens next.”

The strike — which killed five non-leading members of Hamas and a Qatari security officer, but apparently none of its five key intended Hamas leadership targets — elicited fury from Arab governments, which convened for an emergency gathering Monday over the attack.

Trump claims that he had not had knowledge of the attack in time to stop it. However, an Axios report indicated that Netanyahu told Trump 50 minutes before the strike.

Asked on Tuesday if he notified Trump ahead of the strike, Netanyahu repeated his statement that the White House version of events was “correct,” and that Israel was solely responsible for the strike.

Asked by The Times of Israel about whether he still sees Qatar as a mediator in indirect talks with Hamas, Netanyahu said that “if Qatar wanted, it could easily apply much harder pressure, which would help us free all of our hostages in the first months of the war.”

“It is tied to Hamas,” he charged. “It strengthens Hamas. It hosts Hamas. It funds Hamas. It has much stronger levers, and it chose not to do that.”

As such, he insisted, the strike against Hamas leaders in Qatar “was entirely justified.”

“There was an attempt to use them in a partial manner” during the war, Netanyahu continued, without mentioning he had worked with Qatar to send millions of dollars into Gaza every month in the years before the Hamas-led terror onslaught that started the war.

He declined to give an update on whether any Hamas leaders were killed: “We’re still checking it out. It’s not yet fully conclusive. We’re waiting to see it.”

Netanyahu also refused to answer shouted questions about his own advisers who are under investigation for allegedly receiving money from Qatar to push a public relations campaign casting the emirate in a positive light after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Markets spooked by ‘misunderstanding’

Netanyahu called the press conference as a damage-control measure after admitting Monday that Israel was facing increasing isolation and warned that it might be required to become a “super-Sparta.”

The premier said that markets’ negative reaction to his remarks was a “misunderstanding.”

“There was a misunderstanding that supposedly shook the stock market,” he said. ““It didn’t shake us. And the reason it didn’t shake us is one thing: because essentially, the stock market—the markets—understand what I said, the strength of Israel’s economy, and the profitability of investing in Israel. And this is very important for ensuring our future.”

“My remarks were on the attempt to restrict the import of parts, components, weapons, or raw materials – and that indeed is something that does not operate according to market economics, but according to political economics —-governments, leaders, politics,” he added, insisting the economy was sound.

Netanyahu, who frequently switched between English and Hebrew during the press conference, depending on who his message was targeted at, noted that while “Western European governments are generally friendly toward Israel,” they are “pressured by Islamic minorities that have formed within them—some of whom are very extreme.”

Decades of organized anti-Israel propaganda, he added, have compounded the pressure, which “expresses itself as restrictions on parts of weapon systems or the systems themselves.”

Several EU countries have announced in recent days that they would move towards arms embargoes on Israel and stop buying Israeli weapons amid the Gaza war.

The prime minister said Israel must “develop these ourselves, arm ourselves, and ensure we have the ability to defend ourselves,” even if that requires moving temporarily to “a centralized, closed economy, something I generally dislike — I prefer open markets.”

“But here, I want to take all the necessary steps to build a strong, independent defense industry. If there is one lesson from this war, this is it,” he said.

Even though Netanyahu announced he would hold an economic press conference, Channel 12 reported that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich refused to take part in the event, despite being invited.

During a meeting with Netanyahu Monday, Smotrich reportedly told Netanyahu: ‘You caused the damage, you fix it.”

A warning to Hamas

With the Israel Defense Forces carrying out massive strikes in Gaza City, and desperate Israeli families of hostages said they were “terrified” for their loved ones, questions at Netanyahu’s press conference also focused on the push into Gaza’s biggest city.

Netanyahu said he discussed the issue of the hostages with Trump in their latest phone call.

Netanyahu said the two “discussed a possibility that came up, which is very, very important in my eyes — dealing with the issue of the hostages’ security.”

“As Hamas’s spokesperson said, they used our hostages as human shields — that is, placed them in locations that would endanger them. This is horrifying. It also horrified the president. He addressed it,” Netanyahu said, referring to remarks by Trump on Monday warning Hamas against using the hostages as human shields.

Netanyahu added his own warning to Hamas, saying: “If they harm a hair on the head of even one hostage, we will hunt them down with greater force until the end of their lives—and that end will come much faster than they think.”

“And this is what I say to Hamas’s leaders,” Netanyahu continued, “You will have no shelter anyway. But our effort to reach you will be redoubled sevenfold, and we will reach you much faster than you think.”

Hostage families have expressed severe concern for their loved ones over reports that Hamas is keeping hostages in Gaza City to deter Israeli forces from attacking.

Addressing reports of fierce disagreement between him and IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir over how to conduct the war in Gaza, Netanyahu said that “false” leaks and “biased” briefings are hurting the war effort.

“I think it is absolutely unacceptable that leaks that are often false, and briefings that are almost always biased and agenda-driven, are being released,” he said.

“These things make it harder to manage the war, they clearly delay the release of our hostages, and they endanger our soldiers — and they also lower their morale,” he continued, adding that “These are things that must not be done. That is why I do not comment on specific matters of this kind.”

At the press conference — — which saw journalists rushed to the basement of the Prime Minister’s Office shortly beforehand as sirens sounded in the wake of a Houthi missile being launched from Yemen — Netanyahu called for accelerated efforts to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza City, saying it would help ensure the war’s swift end.

“Right now, [Gazans] are leaving Gaza City, and so far almost 400,000 have already left,” Netanyahu said, adding that in a discussion at the IDF command bunker in Tel Aviv earlier in the day, “I instructed them to find ways to make it easier for them to leave.”

“They want to leave, they want to get out of the city, because they want to — they are responding to us, not to Hamas, which, by the way, occasionally even shoots at them to stop them from doing so,” he said.

Netanyahu said the effort to evacuate Gazans from the city ahead of the major offensive “is succeeding, but we need to intensify it — to help, to accelerate it — because we have an interest in ending the war quickly, and not ending it in defeat.”

“To those who say, ‘Come on, finish, just end it’ – ending it in defeat would be an enormous victory for the forces of evil, for Iran’s axis of evil, which would quickly recover from this, because everyone is watching who wins. If [Hamas] survives there, if they remain there, they will call that a victory – and of course, we want to achieve the opposite effect,” he continued.

Last week, the IDF ordered Palestinians in all areas of Gaza City to evacuate immediately ahead the offensive. However, moving can be costly, and space is at a premium in the overcrowded south of the Strip. Many had said they would not leave, exhausted from repeated displacement over the course of the 23-month-old war.

IDF estimates from Tuesday morning indicated that more than 370,000 Palestinians had evacuated Gaza City. That contradicted a UN estimate issued earlier in the day that said around 220,000 Palestinians had fled northern Gaza over the past month.

Regarding voluntary departure from Gaza  — a goal Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners are eager to see achieved — the prime minister said, “This possibility certainly exists; it has not been taken off the table. But it is not an active campaign we are running. It’s not something we are pushing.”

He condemned international opposition to the idea. “Unlike in other war zones in the world, they say it is immoral to allow them to leave. I think what is immoral is not to allow them to leave,” he said.