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Photos: As Mike Pence prayed, Palestinians packed up their businesses in protest

Closed for business.
Closed for business.
Image: EPA/Alaa Badarneh
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US vice president Mike Pence is in Jerusalem this week, making the usual rounds of a visiting leader. He prayed at the Western Wall and visited Yad Vashemm, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust.

His visit comes a month after the Trump administration declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and plans to move the US embassy there from Tel Aviv. That decision, applauded by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and right wing evangelicals in the US, has set back the peace process, The Atlantic’s Emma Green reports:

The administration may have also undermined its own goals in the region. Originally, Pence’s trip was supposed to focus on Christian persecution, according to The Washington Post. But influential religious leaders in Egypt—including Tawadros II, the Coptic patriarch, and Ahmed al-Tayeb, the head of Al-Azhar mosque—refused to meet with him. Palestinian Christian leaders, including Munib Younan, the former head of the Lutheran World Federation, have spoken out against the vice president’s visit.

In response to his visit, Palestinian ruling party Fatah declared a general strike. While Pence spent his last day in Jerusalem taking part in the expected photo ops, the shuttered storefronts and vacant streets from Jerusalem’s Old City to Hebron in the West Bank along with Gaza City, offered a cold reception.

Closed shops in the West Bank city of Nablus on Jan. 23.
Closed shops in the West Bank city of Nablus on Jan. 23.
Image: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini
Closed shops in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Closed shops in the West Bank city of Nablus.
Image: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini
Israeli border police officers walk past closed shops as Palestinian political parties call for a general strike, in Jerusalem’s Old City
Israeli border police officers walk past closed shops as Palestinian political parties call for a general strike, in Jerusalem’s Old City
Image: Reuters/Ammar Awad
A man walks past closed shops  in Jerusalem’s Old City.
A man walks past closed shops  in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Image: Reuters/Ammar Awad
A general view for closed shops during a strike in the West Bank city of Hebron.
A general view for closed shops during a strike in the West Bank city of Hebron.
Image: EPA/Abed Al Hashlamoun
A general view of closed shops during a strike in Gaza City.
A general view of closed shops during a strike in Gaza City.
Image: EPA/Mohammed Saber
A man walks next to closed shops during a strike in Gaza City.
A man walks next to closed shops during a strike in Gaza City.
Image: EPA/Mohammed Saber
People walk down an empty street during a full strike in Hebron, West Bank.
People walk down an empty street during a full strike in Hebron, West Bank.
Image: EPA/Abed Al Hashlamoun
Palestinians walk down an empty street during a full strike in Hebron.
Palestinians walk down an empty street during a full strike in Hebron.
Image: EPA/Abed Al Hashlamoun
A Palestinian man walks down an empty street during a full strike in Nablus, West Bank.
A Palestinian man walks down an empty street during a full strike in Nablus, West Bank.
Image: EPA/Alaa Badarneh