United States boosting Israeli military aid by millions: Netanyahu

The US president dedicated less than an hour to meet with Abbas in Bethlehem, during a two-day visit to Israel.

“Only under our sovereignty Jerusalem had become an island of tolerance”, Netanyahu said.

After enduring eight years of the Obama administration, Rubin says he had “high hopes” that Trump would personally state that Jerusalem is the “undivided capital” of Israel.

Netanyahu told Knesset members that the reunification of Jerusalem by Israeli forces corrected “a historic injustice” and the “achievement of fearless fighters 50 years ago will remain forever”.

A White House statement listing Trump’s goals for the trip included a hilarious (and juicy!) typo: “Promote the possibility of lasting peach” between Israel and the Palestinians. But the State Department said that would not be permitted as officially the Wall is in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied 50 years ago, and Palestinians seek as the capital of a future state.

TRUMP: Making peace, however, will not be easy.

And in words that resonated well in Israel – which chronically accuses the West Bank Authority for inciting violence and compensating families of those involved in terror attacks – Trump made perhaps his sharpest point of the trip.

“I know you’ve heard it before”. Trump spoke of reviving long-stalled peace efforts between the Israelis and Palestinians, but few specifics have emerged of how he intends to do so.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility Tuesday for the attack, although authorities said they had yet to uncover any connections between suspected suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, and any wider terrorist organization.

Donald Trump’s trip to Israel passed by in a flash – after all, the president only stopped in the Jewish state for two days. “I am truly hopeful that America can help Israel and the Palestinians forge peace and bring new hope to the region and its people”. While Netanyahu and Abbas both hailed Trump -Netanyahu stating “working with you, I believe we can advance a durable peace”, and Abbas envisaging that Trump “will go down in history” as the president who secured peace, the verdict elsewhere was mixed.

Israel has repeatedly rejected similar suggestions, saying that the great issues of the Middle East, like the Syrian civil war, the conflict in Yemen, poverty in Egypt or tensions between Sunnis and Shia have nothing to do with Israel and that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is used as a fig leaf by the Arabs to avoid confronting their real issues. Israeli officials were not invited to join him on a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City. On Monday, he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, and departed for Rome on Tuesday afternoon.

Trump arrived at the Presidential palace in Bethlehem in the morning after travelling there by vehicle from Jerusalem. Police also ejected several Jewish visitors who bowed in prayer, in violation of a longstanding ban on Jewish worship at the site.

He did not specifically mention the two-state solution, long the focus of global peace efforts and US Middle-East diplomacy.