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Obama arrives Israel – his first trip as President
The centerpiece of the first leg of the trip will be a speech to Israeli university students on Thursday, during which Obama is expected to renew U.S. assurances to stand by Israel as it seeks to counter threats from Iran and protect its people in the midst of civil war in neighboring Syria, where new questions were raised Tuesday about the Assad regime’s possible use of chemical weapons.
Ahead of Obama’s visit, an Israeli Cabinet minister, Yuval Steinitz, said it is “apparently clear” that chemical weapons were recently used in Syria, and that the alleged attack will be a main topic of conversation with the president. The Obama administration said Tuesday it had no evidence to support the regime’s claims that rebels were responsible for a chemical attack.
Obama has declared the use, deployment or transfer of the weapons would be a “red line” for possible military intervention by the U.S. in the Syrian conflict.
Obama will make several cultural stops in Jerusalem to see some of the ancient Dead Sea Scrolls and pay tribute to the founder of modern Zionism – intended to show his appreciation for the Jewish people’s millennia-old connection to the land that is now Israel as well as the horrors of the Holocaust. He will also visit the Church of Nativity, which is revered throughout Christiandom as the site where Jesus was born.
Obama will make an almost perfunctory visit to the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority’s headquarters in the West Bank, where he will meet embattled Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to assure him that an independent Palestinian state remains a U.S. foreign policy and national security priority. Despite not coming with any new plan to get the stalled peace process back on track, Obama plans to make clear that his administration intends to keep trying to get talks relaunched.
Preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and the Syrian crisis from spilling over into the broader region are top priorities of Israel and the United States, although they have differed in the past on precisely how to achieve both ends.
Iran, in particular, has been a vexing issue, as Iranian leaders continue to defy pressure from the U.S. and other world powers to prove that its nuclear program is peaceful and not, as many suspect, cover for atomic weapons developments.
