Air Force One is scheduled to make a historic non-stop flight between Riyadh and Tel Aviv Monday.
It remained unclear hours before takeoff from Saudi Arabia if the president's plane would be permitted to fly to Israel without a "technical stop," as was mandated for the accompanying press charter which departed earlier in the morning.
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is scheduled to brief reporters aboard Air Force One during the flight, according to the White House. This follows a flap on Sunday when he spoke to foreign reporters in Riyadh alongside Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir. The U.S. press corps traveling with the president was not notified in advance of the news conference.
President Donald Trump is making his first stop in Israel as a president who wants to revive the effort to achieve a long-sought peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Trump's schedule includes meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Trump is due to become the first sitting U.S. president to visit Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall.
In March, Trump said an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is "maybe not as difficult as people have thought," though he has not given any indication of how he might approach the issue differently than did previous U.S. administrations. He has tasked his son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner with leading the effort for the White House.
Trump said during his campaign for president that the best way to negotiate an agreement is taking what he called an "objective" approach to the serious and extremely emotional issues keeping both sides apart. But he has said continued Israeli settlements do not help the peace process, and has backed off his promise to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The last peace negotiations broke down in 2014.
Trump's first overseas stop as president was in Saudi Arabia, where on Sunday he called for Muslim unity in the fight against terrorism and called it "a battle between good and evil."
He spoke at a gathering of dozens of Arab and Muslim leaders at a regional summit in Riyadh, telling them the U.S. wants a coalition of nations "who share the aim of stamping out extremism.
"This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations," Trump said. "This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it."
Trump, who is seeking to impose a travel ban for people from six majority-Muslim countries, did not use the contentious phrase "radical Islamic terrorism" as he frequently has in speeches at home. Instead, he called on the Muslim leaders to honestly confront "the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires."
Trump singled out Iran, a rival of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, accusing Tehran of contributing to instability in the region.
"From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms and trains terrorists, militias and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region," Trump said.
Trump said battling terrorism "means standing together against the murder of innocent Muslims, the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews, and the slaughter of Christians. Religious leaders must make this absolutely clear: Barbarism will deliver you no glory – piety to evil will bring you no dignity."
The speech drew polite applause for about 20 seconds but there was no standing ovation except from the U.S. official delegation.
Jocelyne Cesari, who focuses on Islam and world politics at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, said the language used by Trump in his speech was a "clear departure from his domestic" remarks on Islam.
"He has never made this difference that he made in this speech between Islamist radical ideology and Islam as such...but what it will mean in terms of policy and implementation is not clear," she said.
Trump's speech was a surprising turn for the president in the wake of his “America First” rhetoric and campaign statements calling for a total Muslim travel ban, which he then softened to call for a more limited travel ban from the six Muslim-majority countries. His effort has been blocked by U.S. courts, although Trump is appealing the ruling.
Saudi Arabia is an unprecedented destination for an initial overseas visit by any U.S. president, but the oil-rich nation, which has deep, long-standing energy and defense ties to the United States, was not included in Trump's travel ban edict.
On Saturday, Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Trump signed a nearly $110 billion agreement to bolster the military capabilities of Saudi Arabia.
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