Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to visit Israel the week before the presidential inauguration on January 20.
This will be Pence’s third visit as VP, having been here in 2018 and again earlier this year for a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
The VP’s visit is part of a series of visits by Trump officials to the Holy Land. Last month, Mike Pompeo was in Israel, becoming the first top US official to visit Samaria. During the visit, he told Prime Minister Netanyahu that the US State Department would be defunding any groups that support the Boycott Divestment Sanctions anti-Israel movement, calling the movement “a cancer.”
Pence’s visit will come after National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien visited Israel this week, meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials to discuss regional issues, shared security concerns and the Abraham Accords.
Other than an initial twitter congratulating Biden without referring to him as ‘president-elect’ and a phone call, Netanyahu has not contacted the Democratic candidate for the presidency.
Though his term is coming to an end, the outcome of the elections has yet to be finalized and Trump has not stopped solidifying his friendship with Israel. Last week, the president oversaw yet another peace agreement between Israel and Morocco.