March 11, 2013

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel released a tentative itinerary for President Obama’s visit to Israel and the West Bank.

The March 20-22 visit, according to the schedule released Monday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, will include visits to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, as well as visits to the graves in Jerusalem of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated in 1995 by a Jewish extremist.

Also on the itinerary are a review of Israeli innovations in technology and a tour of the Dead Sea Scrolls, both at the Israel Museum; meetings with Israeli leaders, including a state dinner at the residence of Israeli President Shimon Peres; and a review of a battery of the Iron Dome anti-missile system funded by the United States that Israel said repelled most of the rockets launched from the Gaza Strip during last November’s war with Hamas.

Obama also will spend time in Ramallah with the Palestinian Authority leadership.

Not listed but reported in the Israeli media are a speech that Obama plans to deliver to Israeli university students and a visit to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

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