New York City's mayor, Bill De Blasio, on Saturday kicked off a brief visit to Israel that he has described as a solidarity mission at a difficult time.<br />De Blasio met with his Tel Aviv counterpart, Ron Huldai, in the seaside city early Saturday before attending an event sponsored by a mixed Israeli-Palestinian school.<br />The three-day trip is being paid for by Baruch Eliezer Gross, a Brooklyn resident and founder of the Besadno Group, an investment firm with offices in Jerusalem and New York.<br />The latest wave of Israeli-Palestinian unrest began last month with clashes at Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site and quickly spread across Israel and into the West Bank and Gaza.<br />A series of attacks, mostly stabbings, have unnerved Israel, which has responded by beefing up security nationwide and imposing checkpoints in Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
