{"id":321352,"date":"2017-05-22T05:48:57","date_gmt":"2017-05-22T05:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=321352"},"modified":"2017-05-22T05:48:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-22T05:48:57","slug":"trump-visits-israel-amid-tight-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/05\/trump-visits-israel-amid-tight-security\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump visits Israel amid tight security"},"content":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump is visiting Israel and the Palestinian territories, as he continues his first foreign trip.<\/p>\n
He flies in from Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, where he gave a speech to Arab and Muslim leaders at a summit.<\/p>\n
Mr Trump will hold talks with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders during the course of his two-day stop.<\/p>\n
The president has called an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement “the ultimate deal”, but has been vague about what form it should take.<\/p>\n
He has said he prefers to leave it to both sides to decide between them in direct talks.<\/p>\n
At a summit in Riyadh on Sunday, Mr Trump called on Arab and Muslim leaders to take the lead in combating Islamist militants, urging them to “drive them out of this earth”.<\/p>\n
He singled out Iran, saying it had “fuelled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror” in the region for decades.<\/p>\n
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif later hit back on Twitter, suggesting the US was milking Saudi Arabia for billions of dollars in newly-signed arms deals.<\/p>\n
In his speech, Mr Trump also stated again that he believed peace between Israelis and Palestinians was possible.<\/p>\n
The US president has been widely seen as considerably more supportive of Israel than his predecessor, Barack Obama. He has taken a softer position on the contentious issue of Israeli settlements, suggesting that their expansion rather than their existence might hamper the search for peace.<\/p>\n