US President Donald Trump said on Monday that he had come to Israel from a weekend visit to Saudi Arabia, with new reasons to hope that peace and stability could be achieved in the Middle East.
During my travels in recent days, I have found new reasons for hope. We have before us a rare opportunity to bring security and stability and peace to this region and its people, defeating terrorism and creating a future of harmony, prosperity, and peace, but we can only get there working together. There is no other way.Donald Trump, President of USA
On the second leg of his first overseas trip as President, Trump was to hold talks separately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Netanyahu and his wife Sara, as well as President Reuven Rivlin and members of the Israeli cabinet, were at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport to greet Trump and First Lady Melania in a red carpet ceremony, after what is believed to have been the first direct flight from Riyadh to Israel.
Sara, offered sympathetic words to visiting Trump and his wife Melania on Monday, telling them that people still loved them despite negative media coverage.
“The majority of the people of Israel, unlike the media, they love us, so we tell them how you are great and they love you,” Sara said to Trump and his wife. Trump then interjected: “We have something very much in common.”
Trump's tour comes in the shadow of difficulties at home, where he is struggling to contain a scandal after firing James Comey as FBI director nearly two weeks ago. The trip ends on Saturday after visits to the Vatican, Brussels and Sicily.
Israel shares the antipathy that many Arab states have towards Iran, seeing the Islamic Republic as a threat to its very existence.
"What's happened with Iran has brought many of the parts of the Middle East toward Israel," Trump said in public remarks at a meeting in Jerusalem with Rivlin.
He also urged Iran to cease "its deadly funding, training and equipping of terrorists and militias".
But Iran's freshly re-elected pragmatist President, Hassan Rouhani, said regional stability could not be achieved without Iran's help, and accused Washington of supporting terrorism with its backing for rebels in Syria.
He said the summit in Saudi Arabia "had no political value, and will bear no results".
“Who can say the region will experience total stability without Iran? Who fought against the terrorists? It was Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Syria. But who funded the terrorists?
Rouhani also said Iran would continue a ballistic missile programme that has already triggered US sanctions, saying it was for defensive purposes only.
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