American UN ambassador to visit Jerusalem’s Old City
Nikki Haley, Trump administration’s most outspoken pro-Israel champion, scheduled to crisscross country, from Gaza periphery to northern border
Raphael Ahren is a former diplomatic correspondent at The Times of Israel.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is due to visit the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, this week.
Haley, one of the Trump administration’s most staunchly pro-Israel officials, is scheduled to arrive Wednesday morning at Ben Gurion Airport for her first visit to the Jewish state since taking office in January. During her three-day stay, she is set to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin as well as with senior Palestinian dignitaries.
She is also expected to go to Tel Aviv, visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, and take helicopter rides to Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip and the its northern border.
“We’re happy to host in our country a true friend of Israel,” Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said in a statement. “Haley has been standing with Israel for many years now, and especially since she arrived at the UN. Her important visit is an opportunity to present to her our country and the joint challenges that stand before us.”
According to a press release, Danon will accompany Haley throughout the visit, but her expected visit to various sites in the Old City of Jerusalem is billed as private, which means that no Israeli officials will accompany her.
Last month, US President Donald Trump visited the Western Wall and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, both located in the disputed Old City. The first US president to make such visits while in office, he visited the sites in a private capacity and without official Israeli accompaniment.
Israel captured the Old City and other parts of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War and subsequently annexed them. The entire international community, including the US, has never recognized Israel’s claim to that part of the city.
Many foreign visitors to Israel who want to visit the Old City do so in a private capacity so they don’t appear to be tacitly recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the contested area.
In the lead-up to Trump’s Israel visit, some senior US officials refused to say whether they consider the Western Wall part of Israel. Haley was the only senior member of the administration who took a clear stand on the matter.
“I don’t know what the policy of the administration is, but I believe the Western Wall is part of Israel and I think that that is how we’ve always seen it and that’s how we should pursue it,” she said in a May 17 interview. “We’ve always thought the Western Wall was part of Israel.”
On Monday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn is also scheduled to tour Jerusalem’s Old City.
On March 27, Haley addressed the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, garnering more thunderous applause than any other speaker. There’s a “new sheriff in town,” she declared, announcing that “the days of Israel-bashing are over.” If the UN’s member states continue obsessing about and demonizing the Jewish state, “we’re going to kick them every single time,” she pledged.
Since then, she has been the uncontested darling of America’s pro-Israel community.
