TEL AVIV, Israel — The Israeli government was not shown the memorandum of understanding drafted to end the war with Iran, an Israeli government official told NBC News on Wednesday, the latest sign of growing tension between the United States and Israel.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Shortly after President Donald Trump said he had given a copy of the MOU to Israel, the same source said Israel still hadn’t seen the draft.
The source wouldn’t comment on whether or not Israeli diplomats had asked for the text and were denied it.The Israeli government’s absence in the negotiations leading up to the MOU has become a perilous hindrance for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces career-defining elections before the end of October.
The deal framework was provided to NBC News by a senior U.S.official later on Wednesday.
The Israeli public’s reckoning with Netanyahu’s performance has also collided with an increasingly impatient Trump, whose invective against the prime minister over the past several days has shaken an increasingly isolated Israel.“Without me, there would be no Israel,” Trump told the G7 summit Tuesday, calling Netanyahu “crazy” and using an expletive to describe his poor judgment.
But Trump took particular issue with Netanyahu’s continuing attacks against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, where more than 1 million have been driven from their homes and more than 3,500 people have died, derailing talks with Iran in the past.Trump openly criticized seemingly indiscriminate Israeli attacks on Lebanon.Netanyahu and Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images file“Too many people have been killed,” Trump said at the G7 conference summit in France.
“You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody, because there are a lot of people in those apartment houses, and they’re not all ...