Sunnylands II: King Abdullah II of Jordan

President Obama will meet with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan on February 14 at Sunnylands, the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Estate in Rancho Mirage, California. The United States and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan are close friends and historic partners that have worked together to promote peace, prosperity, and reform. The President looks forward to discussing with King Abdullah opportunities to strengthen the U.S.-Jordan strategic partnership and how to advance our political, economic, and security cooperation. The two leaders will also continue consultations on regional developments, including Middle East peace and Syria.•

The Coachella Valley and Jordan share an intimate bond forged in the 1990s by local date farmers and Jordan’s royal family. King Abdullah II of Jordan, who will arrive in the valley on Friday to meet with President Barack Obama at Rancho Mirage’s Sunnylands estate, has a personal connection to one local date farm. Thousands of date trees planted in the Jordan Valley and surrounding areas of the country are the product of offshoots exported by longtime Thermal date farmers Ben and Pat Laflin. Two hundred and fifty Medjool date palm offshoots — produced by Laflin Date Gardens — were exported to Jordan in April 1995, just months before the Laflins traveled to the Middle Eastern country to lend their expertise to its fledgling date industry.
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Halim Abu Rahmeh owns Medjool Dates of Jordan — a date grower and supplier based in Amman, Jordan. He’s been in the business since 2003, farming a 25-acre plot of land that’s now yielding 60 to 70 tons of date a season. “Jordan is one of the very few countries that grow Medjool dates,” he said. “Medjool dates are ... called the king of dates because they are very unique. They grow in very few countries — Jordan, Palestine, Israel and California. Weather conditions are so similar that allows such dates to grow in those countries.” •