Occupied Jerusalem: Republican John Boehner, the speaker of the US Congress and an ardent backer of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will visit Israel at the end of this month, diplomatic sources said on Friday.
The visit will follow Netanyahu’s surprise election victory this week and his speech to Congress earlier this month on Boehner’s invitation, an event that aggravated the White House and drew sharp criticism.
The date of his visit with a Congressional delegation has not been fixed but it will happen before the end of March, diplomats said.
Officials in the prime minister’s office and at the US embassy in Tel Aviv had no immediate comment.
Boehner angered President Barack Obama and fellow Democrats by inviting Netanyahu to address Congress just two weeks before the Israeli election. Arrangements were made without the White House being kept informed, and Netanyahu used the speech to criticise the Obama administration’s efforts to strike a deal with Iran on its nuclear programme.
In his election campaign, Netanyahu further upset the White House by disavowing an earlier commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He also said Israel’s indigenous Palestinian citizen minority was being mobilised by left-wing groups to vote against him, an accusation that drew charges of racism from opponents and which White House spokesman Josh Earnest called “divisive”.
