Trump travels to Bethlehem for talks with Palestinian president

BETHLEHEM, West Bank, May 23: US President Donald Trump travelled in a high-security convoy to Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank today to discuss Middle East peace with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Much of central and southern Jerusalem was shut down to allow the presidential motorcade of around 60 vehicles to make its way from Trump’s hotel to the town, just eight km (five miles) to the south.
To get to Bethlehem, the location of the Church of the Nativity, where Jesus is said to have been born, Trump passed through an Israeli checkpoint and a network of vast concrete blastwalls that separate the occupied territory from Israel.
The route took the president past the “Walled Off Hotel”, a guesthouse run by the British graffiti artist Banksy that is designed to draw attention to the security infrastructure, which Israel says is there to protect against Palestinian attacks.
On one of the grey concrete walls, the convoy passed a portrait of Leila Khaled, a Palestinian militant who took part in two aircraft hijackings in 1969 and 1970.
(Reuters)