“It was a good conversation,” Biden told reporters at the Oval Office shortly after the call ended, without elaborating.
Netanyahu said in a Twitter post that he had spoken to Biden for about an hour in “friendly and warm” terms, confirming the US-Israel alliance and discussing issues related to Iran, regional diplomacy and the coronavirus pandemic.
He attached a photo of himself over the phone and smiled broadly with a map of the Middle East in the background.
The White House said last week that Biden had waited so long to call Netanyahu after talking to about a dozen other world leaders.
“He will speak to him soon,” said press secretary Jen Psaki, who did not want to give a specific date or time for when they would speak. She later confirmed Netanyahu would be Biden’s first phone call to a Mideast leader.
The decision to drop an appeal to the Israeli prime minister for almost his first month in office, however, did not seem almost coincidental. One source familiar with the White House said there was a sense of repayment to keep Netanyahu waiting for a call.
The source of the Israeli leader’s cool treatment of President Barack Obama and his close affiliation with Trump and the Republican Party, as well as the length of time he took to congratulate Biden on his victory.
Other current and former US officials have said that Biden merely determined the “right size” US relationship with Israel, and that the Middle East is not a top priority with challenges posed by China, Russia, climate change and other problems.
Netanyahu, in turn, downplayed the delay.
“(President Biden) is calling for leaders in the order he is acceptable, North America, then Europe,” Netanyahu told a news conference last week. “He has not yet reached the Middle East. I assume he will call me. Believe me, I do not doubt. ‘
On Friday, Biden is expected to set out his foreign policy vision in more detail in a virtual speech at the Munich Security Conference, including the prospect of a return to the Iran nuclear deal.
Israel has opposed the agreement, and the issue is likely to be a rift between Netanyahu and the Biden government, just as it was under Obama.
But on other issues, the two men appear to be on equal footing, including over the support of the normalization agreements between Arab states and Israel that Trump’s government has helped mediate.
CNN’s Kylie Atwood, Oren Liebermann, Andrew Carey and Amir Tal contributed to this report.