Trump call to confront Iran threat
ISRAEL: Donald Trump hailed a ‘‘rare opportunity’’ for peace in the Middle East during his first visit to Israel yesterday, saying the shared threat of Iran could unite the Jewish state with its Arab neighbours and propel an agreement with the Palestinians.
On the third day of his trip, which included the first visit to the Western Wall by a sitting president, Mr Trump said Iran was the main source of instability in the region and urged Israel to come together with its Arab neighbours to confront the Islamic Republic.
‘‘There is a growing realisation among your Arab neighbours that they have common cause with you in the threat posed by Iran,’’ Trump said. ‘‘What’s happened with Iran has brought many other parts of the Middle East towards Israel.’’
Trump also defended himself against allegations he revealed classified information to Russian diplomats. Trump said he ‘‘never mentioned the word or the name Israel’’ in his conversation with Russia’s foreign minister and ambassador. ‘‘So you have another story wrong,’’ he told journalists.
Several reports claimed that Trump shared Israeli intelligence about the threat posed by Islamic State.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, tried to gloss over the issue by insisting that US-Israeli intelligence sharing had ‘‘never been better’’.
Netanyahu also endorsed the idea of Arab-Israeli co-operation against Iran, saying it would ‘‘help reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians’’.
Trump’s broadsides against Iran in both Israel and Saudi Arabia came days after Iranian voters re-elected their relatively moderate president Hassan Rouhani and rejected a hardline candidate who favoured a more confrontational approach to the West. At his first press conference since his election victory, Rouhani dismissed the anti-Iranian tenor of the summit in Saudi Arabia as ‘‘just a show’’.
The first day of Trump’s visit in Israel was heavy on symbolism but offered few details on how he hopes to clinch ‘‘the ultimate deal’’ - an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
He will give a speech today where he is expected to lay out his broad vision.
Trump will also travel to Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, where he will meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas.
Both Israelis and Palestinians made goodwill gestures ahead of the president’s arrival, with Israel offering some economic benefits for the West Bank and the Palestinians signalling they were open to more extensive land swaps than previously discussed. But officials on both sides said they were still waiting to understand Mr Trump’s plan for trying to broker peace talks.
Wearing a traditional Jewish yarmulke, Trump prayed briefly at the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism.
Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, stoked controversy by refusing to say whether the US considered the Wall to be in Israel.
The long-standing US position has been that the status of Jerusalem is not settled until there is a peace agreement. Tillerson also accidentally said that Tel Aviv was ‘‘home to Judaism’’ instead of Jerusalem. Both comments irritated the Israelis.
Trump’s unscripted comments on the alleged information leak to Russia denied an allegation that was never made.
Critics said the problem was not that he explicitly identified Israel, but that he might have endangered the source of the intelligence and make Israel and other allies more wary of sharing secrets with the US.
‘‘The fact that he still doesn’t understand what the fuss is about is deeply disconcerting and raises serious questions about his judgement,’’ said Oren Kessler, a Washington-based analyst formerly based in Israel.
The president and his wife Melania landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport accompanied Mr Trump’s daughter Ivanka and sonin-law Jared Kushner, whom the president has put in charge of Middle East peace.
They were greeted by Netanyahu and his wife Sara, who told the Trumps that the two couples had something in common: they were disliked by the media but loved by their people. Mr Trump said: ‘‘We have very much in common.’’
- Telegraph Group