Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Ivanka And Jared Expected To Go To Israel With Trump

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are expected to accompany President Donald Trump on his first visit to Israel next month.

It is not clear whether first lady Melania Trump will join the delegation at the end of May, the Israeli daily Yediot Acharonot reported Thursday. Ivanka Trump, the president’s Jewish daughter, and Kushner, his son-in-law, are among the president’s closest advisers.

The visit reportedly will come as part of Trump’s first trip abroad as president at the end of May, when he is scheduled to be part of a summit of leaders of NATO nations in Brussels. The White House has told Israel the visit will be held on May 22, Yediot reported, and that the president will spend one night in the country.

A delegation of about 25 American officials was set to arrive in Israel on Thursday to coordinate the visit, Yediot reported. The delegation was scheduled to meet at the Foreign Ministry to coordinate the details of the visit and then hold meetings at the president’s residence and the Prime Minister’s Office, as well as make site visits to potential places that will appear on Trump’s itinerary.

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will be part of the delegation visiting Israel with the president.

The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, reportedly will arrive in Israel on May 15 and present his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin in June.

Trump’s visit could come immediately before Jerusalem Day on May 24, which will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of the city.

June 1 marks the expiration of the six-month waiver signed by President Barack Obama on moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. Successive presidents have exercised the waiver every six months since the 1995 law mandating the move of the embassy, citing national security reasons over concerns that a move would lead to Islamist and Arab nationalist attacks on Americans and their allies in the region.

Ynet reported that Trump could recognize a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel during the visit, which will come less than three weeks after he meets at the White House with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. He hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in February.

Trump is seeking “a conflict-ending settlement between the Palestinians and Israel,” the president’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, said last week in confirming Abbas’ visit.**
**

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.