Trump urges Israelis and Palestinians: Make peace

After leaving Israel, Trump headed to Rome for a meeting with Pope Francis.

“Making peace, however, will not be easy”.

Instead, Trump has pitched himself as a “mediator, an arbitrator or a facilitator” to help both sides to reach a lasting peace settlement and has resisted stating must-have aspects of such a deal. But there are still no signs of hope for the peaceful coexistence of the Jewish country with Palestine.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that at this same press conference, Netanyahu told Trump, “I want you to know how much we appreciate the change in American policy on Iran … and I want to tell you also how much we appreciate the reassertion of American leadership in the Middle East”.

Trump made headlines as the first sitting US president to visit the famous Western Wall, part of the Temple Mount and one of Judaism’s holiest sites.

I even met a Palestinian woman yesterday who said she read Trump’s book “How to Get Rich”.

The visit follows an initial leg in Saudi Arabia, where he urged Islamic leaders to confront extremism.

As Daniel pointed out, Trump came face to face with a major symbol of Israel’s occupation during his journey to Bethlehem this morning “when his motorcade sped through a gap in the Israeli separation barrier that separates Israel from the West Bank”.

The status of Jerusalem, which both the Israelis and Palestinians claim as their capitals, is also a major complication to a solution.

“I’m personally committed to helping Israelis and Palestinians achieve a peace agreement”, Trump said.

The Palestinian president raised the issue of Palestinian detainees, who have been holding a hunger strike for more than a month.

Palestinians staged a general strike Monday in support of the prisoners.

Israeli forces moved in, and clashes ensued with the Palestinian protesters.

He didn’t talk about a two-state solution.

“There is no regional peace process or anything like it”.

In June 2009, Obama made his first overseas trip to Cairo to apologize to the Muslim world for America’s fight against Muslim terrorists after al-Qaida’s 9/11 attack.

What was the most significant achievement of Trump’s first foreign trip as United States president to the Arab world this past week?

The two men had a clash of words past year when Trump was running for president with a major pledge to build a wall along the U.S. -Mexico border. “But again, on a bipartisan basis, we’ve been deflated before – hopefully that won’t be this time, because next time I go to Israel I would hope we’ll see groundbreaking on our embassy there”.

The status of Jerusalem is ultra-sensitive and has been among the most hard issues in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, stalled since April 2014.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem and the contested Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. The U.S. has never recognized Israeli sovereignty over territory occupied in 1967, including east Jerusalem. Trump is set to meet in person with May later this week. On Friday and Saturday, the president is back in Italy, specifically on the island of Sicily, for the Group of Seven summit.