U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will travel to Saudi Arabia and Israel this month, kicking off his first foreign trip, where he will work to reinvigorate traditional alliances in the region.

Trump said he would also visit the Vatican along with his swing through the Middle East before attending a NATO meeting in Brussels on May 25 and the Group of Seven summit in Sicily on May 26.

The maiden foreign trips of U.S. presidents often take on broader symbolic import, and by choosing the Middle East as his first stop, Trump will highlight his lofty promises to eradicate Islamic State insurgents and bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Trump cast his trip as an effort to build cooperation and support between Muslims, Christians and Jews for fighting terrorism.

“Our task is not to dictate to others how to live but to build a coalition of friends and partners who share the goal of fighting terrorism and bringing safety, opportunity and stability to the war-ravaged Middle East,” Trump said during a speech in the Rose Garden at an event on religious liberty.

Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama had a testy relationship with both Israel and Saudi Arabia, whose leaders viewed him as being concerned less with traditional alliances than with negotiating a deal to rein in Iran’s nuclear programme.

Trump has been criticized for his “America First” mantra for national security issues, for challenging allies in NATO and the Middle East to do more to pay for their own defence, and for immigration policies that have been cast as anti-Muslim.

Even as he has described himself as a non-interventionist unwilling to be “the policeman of the world”, Trump has recently shown he is willing to engage militarily when he sees fit.

Last month, he ordered missile strikes on a Syrian airfield in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that he blamed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

IRAN AN IMPETUS

The idea to visit Saudi Arabia first came during conversations the Trump team held with Saudi officials after the November election, where Saudis sought a fresh start on areas of common interest, including tackling the causes of extremism and dealing with the destabilising activities of an emboldened Iran.

By choosing Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest shrines, as his first destination, Trump intends to send a message about how he wants to show leadership on global issues like the fight against Islamic State militants by strengthening alliances, senior administration officials told reporters.

“What he wants to do is solve the same problem that a lot of the leaders in the Islamic world want to do,” an official said during a briefing, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We thought (going to Saudi Arabia first) was very important because obviously people have tried to portray the president in a certain way,” the official said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir described Trump’s visit to the kingdom as a historic visit and one that would entail a bilateral summit, another one with Arab Gulf leaders and the United States and one with Arab and Muslim countries.

“It’s a clear and powerful message that the U.S. harbours no ill-will” towards the Arab and Muslim world, he told reporters in Washington. “It also lays to rest the notion that America is anti-Muslim.”

Saudi Arabia’s powerful Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Trump in Washington in March in a visit a senior Saudi advisor called a “historical turning point” in relations.

Trump complained in an interview with Reuters last week that Saudi Arabia was not treating the United States fairly and that Washington was losing a “tremendous amount of money” defending the kingdom.

“What we’ve done is come up with what we think will be some very exciting deliverables in the meeting,” one of the officials said, declining to provide details.

‘HUMILITY’ ON PEACE PROCESS

In meetings in Israel, Trump will discuss how he plans to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a goal that has evaded many previous administrations.

Trump has provided no concrete details on how he will revive long-stalled peace talks, but has asked Israel to limit its building of Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for a state.

He has assigned his son-in-law Jared Kushner to oversee efforts.

“We’ll approach it, I think, with a lot of humility,” a senior administration official told reporters during a preview of the meeting.

Trump met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on Wednesday, and will meet with him again during the trip, the White House said.

Officials declined to say where Trump would meet with Abbas, and also said exact dates and other details of the trip would be provided later.

The Vatican said Pope Francis would meet Trump on May 24, a discussion that could be awkward given their opposing positions on immigration, refugees, and climate change.

Some 70 countries reaffirmed on Sunday that only a two-state solution could resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and warned against any unilateral steps by either side that could prejudge negotiations.

The final communique of a one-day international Middle East peace conference in Paris shied away from explicitly criticising plans by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to move the U.S Embassy to Jerusalem, although diplomats said the wording sent a “subliminal” message.

Trump has pledged to pursue more pro-Israeli policies and to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, all but enshrining the city as Israel’s capital despite international objections.

Countries including key European and Arab states as well as the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council were in Paris for the conference, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected as “futile”.

Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians were represented.

However, just five days before Trump is sworn in, the meeting was seen as a platform for countries to send a strong signal to the incoming American president that a two-state solution to the conflict could not be compromised on and that unilateral decisions could exacerbate tensions on the ground.

The participants “call on each side … to refrain from unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of negotiations on final-status issues, including, inter alia, on Jerusalem, borders, security, refugees and which they will not recognise,” the final communique said.

A French diplomatic source said there had been tough negotiations on that paragraph.

“It’s a tortuous and complicated paragraph to pass a subliminal message to the Trump administration,” the diplomat said.

REAFFIRMING RESOLUTION 2334

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters it would have been inappropriate to include the issue of moving the U.S. embassy, it being publicly debated in the United States.

Relations between the United States and Israel have soured during President Barack Obama’s administration, reaching a low point late last month when Washington declined to veto U.N. resolution 2334 demanding an end to Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

Paris has said the meeting did not aim to impose anything on Israel or the Palestinians and that only direct negotiations could resolve the conflict.

The final draft did not go into any details other than reaffirming U.N. Security Council resolutions, including 2334. Diplomats said that had been a source of friction in talks.

“When some are questioning this, it’s vital for us to recall the framework of negotiations. That framework is the 1967 borders and the main resolutions of the United Nations,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told reporters.

Kerry, who abandoned his efforts to broker peace talks in April 2014, told reporters that the meeting had “moved the ball forward.”

“It underscores this is not just one administration’s point of view, this is shared by the international community broadly,” he said.

France, home to Europe’s largest Muslim and Jewish communities, has tried to breathe new life into the peace process over the past year and argued that it should not play second fiddle to the war in Syria and the fight against Islamic State militants.

FOLLOW-UP MEETING?

The final statement said interested parties would meet again before year-end.

But Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday that “this conference is among the last twitches of the world of yesterday … Tomorrow will look different and that tomorrow is very close.”

Britain added its criticism on Sunday. A Foreign Office statement said the Paris conference risked “hardening positions” given Israel had objected to it and that the U.S. administration is about to change.

Prime Minister Theresa May delivered a sharp rebuke on Israel last month to its U.S. ally when she scolded Secretary of State John Kerry for describing the Israeli government as the most right-wing in Israeli history. The criticism aligned her more closely with Trump.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who said on Saturday that moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem would kill off the peace process, said the Paris meeting would help at stopping “settlement activities and destroying the two-state solution through dictations and the use of force.”