US President Donald Trump will start a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories as part of his Middle East tour.
Trump began his tour of Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the United States, delivering a speech to a summit of Arab and Muslim leaders.
The US president will hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders during his visit, which ends tomorrow.
Trump called a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israelis "the ultimate goal," but his comments were vague on what such an agreement should be.
The US president said he preferred to leave the decision in the hands of the parties in direct talks.
At the Riyadh summit, Trump urged Arab and Muslim leaders to lead the fight against Islamic militants, saying: "Get them out of this land."
He accused Iran of "fomenting sectarian violence and terrorism" in the region for decades.
He also reiterated his belief that peace between Palestinians and Israelis could be achieved.
Many see widely that the US president is more supportive of Israel than his predecessor, Barack Obama. He took a more lenient stance on Israeli settlements, saying that their expansion and not their presence could hinder efforts to establish peace.
More than 600,000 Jews live in some 40 settlements built since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. Under international law, settlements are illegal, which Israel argues.
The US president also sent mixed signals on the issue of Jerusalem. He initially pledged to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv, which pleased the Israelis and angered the Palestinians.
However, he had not yet acted on that. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently said Trump was still studying the matter.
Israel considers Jerusalem as its capital, while the Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be their capital.
The international community does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem, and states keep its embassies in Tel Aviv.
Before Trump's visit, there was a state of anxiety in Israel over statements made by administration officials.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to refute Tilerson's remarks in which he noted that the transfer of the US embassy to Jerusalem could harm the peace process.
An official in the US consulate raised anger when he said that the western wall that borders the Al-Aqsa Mosque is "not in your land, but part of the West Bank."
The White House later said the official's statements "do not represent the position of the United States."
Trump's visit comes days after reports that the president leaked to the Russian foreign minister secret intelligence, reportedly from an Israeli source.
It has raised questions about the secrecy of intelligence transferred to the United States from its closest ally in the Middle East.
There has been a state of security alert with Trump's visit, during which he will hold separate talks with Netanyahu today and with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Bethlehem tomorrow.
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