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U.S. Vice President Mike Pence to visit Israel, Jordan, Egypt

Donald Trump, Mike Pence (Facebook/Mike Pence)

United States Vice President Michael Richard "Mike" Pence, 58, is set to visit the Middle East in late January 2018. Among the countries he will visit are Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

Originally, Pence was scheduled to travel to the transcontinental region in December 2017 but it was postponed. He postponed the trip so he could preside over the vote on a tax overhaul favored by U.S. President Donald Trump.

In the original itinerary, Pence was supposed to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Pope Tawadros II of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and Ahmed Muhammad Ahmed el-Tayeb, the current Grand Imam of al-Azhar. The meetings were cancelled after Trump announced that his administration had decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6, 2017.

Pence will leave Washington, D.C. on January 19, 2018. He will arrive in Egypt the next day to meet Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, who has agreed to meet with him despite the unpopular decision of the U.S. President.

On January 21, 2018, Pence will travel to Jordan to meet the country's King Abdullah II. The U.S. Vice President will spend the next two days in Israel and have a bilateral discussion with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who recently shared his thoughts on Trump's criticism of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

"UNRWA is an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem, and perpetuates also the narrative of the so-called right of return, whose goal is the elimination of Israel," The Times of Israel quoted Netanyahu as saying. "For these reasons, UNRWA should be shut down."

In addition to the bilateral discussion with Rivlin and Netanyahu, Pence is scheduled to speak at the Knesset, the unicameral national legislature of Israel. He will also go to Jerusalem to visit the Western Wall and Yad Vashem, the largest Holocaust memorial in Israel.

The goal of Pence's visit to the Middle East is to reaffirm the commitment of the U.S. to work with its allies in the region "to defeat radicalism that threatens future generations," his press secretary Alyssa Farah said in a statement obtained by the Washington Post. She told the publication that he is looking forward to meeting with the leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Israel to discuss how to collaboratively fight terrorism and improve U.S. national security.
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