US PRESIDENT Donald Trump flew in to Israel yesterday as strikes and clashes continued across the occupied territories.

Following a meeting with his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin, he said Arab nations shared “common cause” with Israel against “the threat posed by Iran.”

At a Middle East summit in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh on Sunday Mr Trump had accused Tehran of backing terrorists “from Lebanon to Iraq and Yemen.”

He called Iran’s support of Syria against Western and Saudi-backed al-Qaida and Isis terrorists a “destabilising intervention” that had led to “unspeakable crimes.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi countered that Mr Trump was “reinvigorating terrorists in the region” and should stop selling arms to “dangerous terrorists” — meaning Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Mr Trump prayed at the Western Wall in East Jerusalem, which Palestine wants as the capital of an independent state, and toured the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had greeted Mr Trump, did not accompany him to the holy sites.

The US businessman-turned-politician claimed yesterday that conditions were right to strike “the ultimate deal” on the 50-year Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Mr Trump will meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas today.

While Mr Trump was feted by the Israelis, the occupied West Bank was shut down by a general strike in support of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinian Ma’sn news agency said 13 protesters were shot and injured — one seriously — by Israeli occupation forces.

The hunger strike, in demand of better conditions in Israeli jails, entered its 36th day yesterday. Many of the strikers are suffering severe health problems. On Sunday hunger-strike leader and PLO commander Marwan Barghouti’s wife Fadwa said 220 more prisoners had joined the action.

Israeli occupation forces killed a Palestinian man and a 16-year-old boy yesterday, claiming they tried to stab officers. Police spokeswoman Luba Samri said the man was shot by police after running with a knife at officers near Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem.

And spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told Ma’an that border police officers shot the youth at a “container checkpoint” north-east of Bethlehem. A Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman said that the occupation forces prevented its ambulance from reaching the boy, who witnesses said was covered in a blanket.

In the besieged Gaza Strip, occupation forces fired on fishermen and farmers in three separate incidents.

On Sunday former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee — formerly a rival to Mr Trump for the Republican Party presidential nomination — accompanied some 4,000 hard-line zionists to Joseph’s Tomb, east of Nablus in the West Bank, under Israeli army escort.

Clashes broke out between the occupation forces and local youths, with two arrested and others treated for tear-gas inhalation. The tomb, a site holy to Jews, Muslims, Christians and Samaritans, is regularly visited by Israelis escorted by troops, often sparking clashes with local Palestinians.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, the tomb was to remain under Israeli control but the Palestinian Authority took over the site after the Israeli army withdrew during the second intifada (Arab uprising) of the early 2000s