Al Jazeera Podcasts.

Today, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu is off to the White House.

Will this actually be an on-ramp to a permanent ceasefire? No guarantee of that.

As a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas appears within reach,

what's really driving this visit to Washington?

I'm Kevin Hurton, and this is the take.

I think we're close to a deal on Gaza.

We could have it this week.

To understand how we got here, I spoke to a former Israeli negotiator who's seen it all.

Daniel Levy, joining you from London, president of the U.S. Middle East project,

previously have negotiated on the Israeli side many years ago with the Palestinians,

worked as an advisor in the Israeli Prime Minister's office.

Okay, well, welcome back to the take, Daniel. So here we are again talking about a potential ceasefire for Gaza.

And what's amazing is the fundamentals haven't really changed. I mean, Israel still wants the captives returned.

While Hamas wants a permanent ceasefire, basically they want to guarantee that if it does return the captives, Israel won't immediately just resume the bombings,

right? So that until now, that's a guarantee that Netanyahu has been unwilling to grant,

but there now is a new factor at play.

Israel thanks President Trump and the United States for their support in defense and their

participation in eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat.

Netanyahu claimed that a lot of opportunities have now opened.

I want to inform you that we have opened, as you very well now, many new opportunities

that have opened now as a result of this victory.

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