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2:40 p.m. | Updated Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, was scheduled to dine in Jerusalem with Israel’s prime minister on Monday evening after a whirlwind tour that was heavy on holy sites but devoid of public statements on foreign policy issues.

Ms. Palin’s first trip to Israel was billed as a private visit, a day and a half stop on the way back to the United States from India.

Israeli observers said it was a preparatory trip for a longer working visit in the future. They also said that the visit was meant to improve Ms. Palin’s record on foreign policy and allow her to tick off Israel as a destination, which would become important should she announce a presidential run as a Republican candidate in  2012.

Even in the Israeli news media, however, her presence was overshadowed by coverage of the events in Libya, Syria and Japan.

Ms. Palin was following in the footsteps of other potential candidates for the Republican nomination who have visited Israel recently, including two former  governors, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and  Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi.

“I am sure the purpose of the visit has little to do with learning what is going on in 24 hours,” said Prof. David Ricci, an American studies expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “But she can go back to her constituents and say that she was here.”

Critics mocked Ms. Palin as a foreign policy novice during her vice presidential campaign in 2008, pouncing on her remark that “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska.” She also described North Korea as an American ally last year.

And in a 2009 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, Ms. Palin, a committed Christian and a staunch supporter of Israel, summarily contradicted decades of official American policy by declaring that Israel’s Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Washington considers illegitimate, “should be allowed to be expanded upon because that population of Israel is, is going to grow.”

The lack of any formal news media access to Ms. Palin in Jerusalem meant that there was no room for questions or gaffes. Her brief remarks to the cameras were limited to general remarks about her support for Israel.

In a statement on her official Web site ahead of the visit, she wrote: “As the world confronts sweeping changes and new realities, I look forward to meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the key issues facing his country, our ally Israel.”

Other than the meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though, the visit seemed to have a mostly religious flavor. On Sunday evening, soon after arriving, Ms. Palin, wearing a large Star of David pendant, stepped out of a van with her husband, Todd, and the rest of her entourage in Jerusalem’s Old City and proceeded to the Western Wall tunnel, an excavated walkway that exposes a large, underground section of the Western Wall, the iconic holy site and place of Jewish worship.

She was accompanied by Danny Danon, a rightist deputy speaker of Parliament from the Likud Party and chairman of World Likud. Mr. Danon, a vocal proponent of settlement expansion and a sharp critic of the Obama administration, said on Monday that he and Ms. Palin discussed problems in the area relating to Muslims and the fact that Jews are barred from praying atop the Temple Mount.

He was referring to the plateau above the Western Wall revered by Jews as the site where their ancient temples once stood, and by Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, the compound that now houses the Al Aksa Mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock.

Mr. Danon said in a telephone interview that he and Ms. Palin did not discuss the settlement issue. But he said that he told her about the deadly Palestinian riots that broke out after Israel opened an exit to the tunnel in the Via Dolorosa in 1996. Some 70 Palestinians and 17 Israeli soldiers were killed in the violence; Israel had opened the exit surreptitiously, without coordinating with the Muslim authorities, in an area that is religiously and politically sensitive. The Old City lies in territory that Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war. Israel annexed that part of Jerusalem after the war, but the move was never internally recognized.

Mr. Danon said that Ms. Palin prayed by the wall inside the tunnel. When she emerged, Ms. Palin told waiting reporters, “It’s overwhelming to be able to see and touch the cornerstone of our faith.”

On Monday, Ms. Palin toured Christian sites in Jerusalem.

Israel, while welcoming all Republican hopefuls, is likely to be careful not to favor one above another.

Ms. Palin is strongly identified as the voice of the conservative Tea Partiers, some of whom want to cut American foreign aid, including to Israel, a major recipient.

That might give pause to many Israelis. But asked about the aid issue, Mr. Danon said that he had “not heard anything like that” from Ms. Palin.

OLD POST: Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, on Monday became the latest Republican politician to travel to Israel in advance of a possible bid for the presidential nomination.

Ms. Palin was set to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Monday before returning to the United States. Over the weekend, Ms. Palin gave a paid speech in India.

In a statement on the Web site of her political action committee, Ms. Palin wrote that she was “thankful to be able to travel to Israel on my way back to the U.S.”

“As the world confronts sweeping changes and new realities, I look forward to meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the key issues facing his country, our ally Israel,” she said.

On her arrival in the country on Sunday, Ms. Palin paid a visit to the Wailing Wall, one of Israel’s holiest sites. She was also scheduled to meet with other Israeli officials.

The trip helps to stoke speculation about Ms. Palin’s presidential intentions. But she continues to say she is merely “considering” whether or not to make a bid for the chance to challenge President Obama next year.

If she does, the trips may help respond to early critics who said she was unprepared to deal with foreign policy because of a lack of experience around the world.

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India Today, via Associated Press Sarah Palin speaking at a conference in New Delhi on Saturday.

NEW DELHI — Sarah Palin said on Saturday that she wasn’t ready to announce a presidential run. “I don’t think there needs to be a rush,” she said during an appearance at a conference here in New Delhi. Running for political office is a “life-changing decision that so affects a family,” she said, and many questions still needed to be answered.

Ms. Palin’s speech at a conference organized by the media group India Today touched on many subjects, including her sympathy with the people of Japan and their “humble cooperative spirit,” the dangers of a green-energy policy and her children texting her news of a moose in the yard of her Alaska home. Ms. Palin made numerous references to America’s entrepreneurial and pioneering spirit, and India’s unlocking of the same to become a vibrant global giant.

Together, she said, the two countries will lead the world in the 21st century. “There is no natural limit for United States and India relations,” she said. India is the second-fastest growing major economy in the world after China, but is still hobbled by extreme poverty, inefficient infrastructure and political corruption.

Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, were in India for such a short time that they did not get a chance to see the Taj Mahal, in part because it is closed on Fridays, the only day they had free time. Instead, according to local media reports, they went to one of New Delhi’s glitzy new shopping malls.

Hundreds of India’s top business executives, journalists and politicians packed a ballroom at the Taj Palace hotel to hear Ms. Palin. After being introduced as the “sexiest brand in Republican politics,” she detailed her upbringing and her Alaskan political career before riffing on central themes — the importance of individual independence, free markets and the need to drill for oil.

A “secure, stable supply of fuel is key to a prosperous America,” she said. “My vision of a free and prosperous America has much to do with energy.” But that won’t come from green energy, she said, which has destroyed thousands of jobs in Scotland and England and helped create a massive debt in Spain.

America should “capitalize on our own resources right there on our doorsteps,” she said, by tapping into billions of barrels of oil that are “warehoused” in Alaska.

In the past decade the India Today “conclave,” as the conference is called, has played host to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Colin Powell, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the writer V.S. Naipaul, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and the Queen of Jordan, among others.

This year, Ms. Palin’s peers include the Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, Germaine Greer and the “serial hacker” Josh Klein. The conference has been trying to secure Ms. Palin as a speaker for two years, executives said. “We see there is a change happening in America,” Kalli Purie, the director of the conference, said in an interview before Ms. Palin’s speech. “She represents middle America so it is good to get her perspective.”

Ms. Purie would not disclose the fee Ms. Palin earned from the speech, but said the group paid what Ms. Palin’s representative at the Washington Speakers’ Bureau, a booking agency, sought.

After her speech, Ms. Palin answered specific questions about foreign and economic policy. Asked how she might have the handled the financial crisis that led the United States government to fund billions in bank bailouts, Ms. Palin said she “didn’t think it was such a tough situation that had to lead to all those bailouts.” Instead, she said, the government could have allowed “the free market to decide who the winners and losers should be.”

Quizzed on outsourcing, a hot-button issue in India, Ms. Palin evoked free trade several times, affirmatively, to a smattering of applause from the audience.

She was critical of China and America’s relationship with the country, saying “America is economically linked to China. They hold much of the note,” referring to America’s treasury bills. It is a “dangerous place to be,” she said.

She also criticized her own party. “Too often Republicans have the fighting instinct of sheep — they just sit back and take it,” she said. The party was not always happy with her, she also admitted. “I’m pretty independent and some players in the Republican hierarchy don’t like that.” Her independence may have to do with being a “busy mom,” she said. “I’m so busy I don’t have the time to play some of the games these guys want to play.”

Asked why the party lost the last presidential election, Ms. Palin gave a nod to President Obama. “Candidate Obama had a strong campaign and was the agent of change,” she said. Ms. Palin agreed with moderator that she, too, was a change agent but said, “I wasn’t the top of the ticket.” She quickly added: “I’m not saying I should have been.”

Hillary Clinton was as strong a candidate as Barack Obama, she added, and “she had more experience.” Ms. Palin added that it will “be fascinating to see what Hillary decides to do in the coming months.” Ms. Clinton, she predicts, “will be a strong candidate in the future.”

“It is time for a woman to become president,” she added, though it doesn’t necessarily mean she should run. “There are a lot of good potential female candidates out there. There are a lot of gals.”

And asked about her husband’s prospective title if she entered the White House, Ms. Palin made the familiar “First Dude” crack, then suggested a new moniker: “First Gentleman.”

Quickly, though, she added: “Man, that’s getting way ahead of ourselves, isn’t it?”

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Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Sarah Palin spoke to the Long Island Association in Woodbury on Thursday.

WOODBURY, N.Y. — Sarah Palin urged Congressional Republicans on Thursday to stand against raising the nation’s debt ceiling when the issue is debated this spring, declaring, “It doesn’t necessarily have to result in a government shutdown.”

Ms. Palin said she believed that increasing the Treasury Department’s legal borrowing limit would simply “create the allowance for big spenders to get in there,” rather than save the country from defaulting on its financial burdens. She said that “the government receives so much revenue” every day that she doubted the money would run out to pay for critical operations.

In a luncheon appearance before the Long Island Association, which bills itself as the state’s largest business organization, Ms. Palin engaged in an animated exchange as she took questions about current affairs, her worldview and, of course, her political future. She said that she was still weighing whether to join the 2012 Republican presidential race, but said voters craved an unconventional candidate.

“People are ready for our governmental establishment to be shaken up,” Ms. Palin said, adding that if she decided to become a candidate, she would campaign aggressively face-to-face with voters, not simply from a distance. “In a heated primary, it allows for some great debate – very heated discourse – all those things we need in order for those voters to decide.”

At the conclusion of more than an hour of discussion, Ms. Palin did not offer a definitive answer about whether she would be a candidate:

I’m not saying it’s going to be me offering my name up in the name of service. There is so much to be considered, but I certainly believe that this is going to be an unconventional political cycle.

It was a rare public outing for Ms. Palin and unlike nearly any other public appearance that she has recently made. She did not deliver a prepared speech or simply offer her opinions on television through her role as an analyst on the Fox News Channel. Instead, Ms. Palin took a seat at the front of a country club ballroom and took questions from the president of the Long Island Association, Kevin Law.

The tone was friendly, but the length of the event offered at least a small and unscripted window into Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor, that is seldom seen since she made her debut on the national political stage as Senator John McCain’s presidential running mate more than two years ago.

When asked why her approval rating had fallen in public opinion surveys, she said, “In a lot of those polls, yeah, I get my butt kicked.”

When asked why she opposed all types of gun control – with the moderator openly disagreeing with her – she said that the “bad guys” aren’t going to follow the laws, anyway.

And as she talked about the escalating price of gas and groceries, she said, “It’s no wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody you better breast-feed your baby – yeah, you better – because the price of milk is so high right now!”

As the crowd broke into laughter, she added, “And may that not be the takeaway, please, of this speech.”

The Long Island Association invited Ms. Palin to speak about a month ago. She was paid for her appearance, but officials with the group declined to disclose details of the arrangement.

Ms. Palin arrived at the Crest Hollow Country Club late Thursday morning and appeared on a private photo line with members of the business association before taking her seat at the head table. Bristol Palin, who often accompanies her mother to speaking engagements, was also at the luncheon that drew nearly 1,000 paying guests [pdf].

Ms. Palin was the latest in a long string of political figures to appear before the annual meeting of the Long Island Association. As people ate a tomato salad and chicken breast lunch, a video played that featured highlights from a joint appearance by George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush, along with other political leaders like Newt Gingrich and Colin Powell.

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — As Sarah Palin delivered a weekend address here, paying tribute to Ronald Reagan on the centennial of his birth, she directed a forceful line of criticism at President Obama and his administration, though she did not mention the crisis in Egypt. But in a subsequent television interview, she took Mr. Obama to task for his handling of the matter.

“It’s a difficult situation,” Ms. Palin told the Christian Broadcasting Network. “This is that 3 a.m. White House phone call, and it seems for many of us trying to get that information from our leader in the White House, it seems that that call went right to the answering machine.”

The early-morning phone call that Ms. Palin mentioned was reprised from the 2008 Democratic presidential primary fight, when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton aired a stinging television ad suggesting that Mr. Obama lacked foreign policy experience. To drive home the point, the commercial showed a telephone ringing — unanswered — in the middle of the night.

Three years later, Mrs. Clinton is deeply entwined in the diplomatic crisis in Egypt as Mr. Obama’s secretary of state. (These days, if there are any 3 a.m. phone calls, it probably means that the situation was elevated to the attention of the White House, where the telephone is answered around the clock.)

In an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, Ms. Palin criticized the Obama administration for failing to explain “to the American public what they know.” In an excerpt of the interview released Saturday evening on the network’s Web site, Ms. Palin declared: “Now, more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House.”

This is a transcript, provided by the network, of Ms. Palin’s response to Mr. Brody’s question about how she believes the president has handled the situation in Egypt:

“And nobody yet has, nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and no, not, not real enthused about what it is that that’s being done on a national level and from D.C. in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And, in these areas that are so volatile right now, because obviously it’s not just Egypt but the other countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And, we do not have all that information yet.”

At her appearance here in Santa Barbara on Friday evening, Ms. Palin spoke for about 30 minutes and did not take questions from the audience or reporters.

She spoke exclusively to Mr. Brody in a 10-minute interview following the speech. Asked what she might do differently if she decided to run for president, Ms. Palin said: “I would continue on the same course of not really caring what other people say about me or worrying about the things that they make up, but having that thick skin and a still spine.”

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Chris Butler/The Idaho Statesman, via Associated Press Sarah Palin at an Idaho rally last year. She released a video Wednesday on the Tucson shootings.

Sarah Palin may be inching toward a presidential run in 2012 as she heads next week to Nevada for two speeches and her advisers quietly begin talking to Republican activists in Iowa.

Both states will be key to winning the Republican nomination, and Ms. Palin’s advisers are determined to do the groundwork necessary should she decide to jump into the campaign.

The informal conversations in Iowa, reported by the Web site Real Clear Politics, are the first baby steps in what would have to become a much more elaborate turnout effort if Ms. Palin, the former Alaska governor, decides to run.

And her speeches in Nevada to two outdoors groups — including one on the same night that President Obama delivers his State of the Union speech in Washington — give her a platform to talk about hunting and guns in the wake of the shootings in Arizona this month.

“There are a lot of Republican activists who want the governor to run and want to get involved and want to help,” said Tim Crawford, the treasurer of Ms. Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC.

Mr. Crawford said the conversations were “part of a process of gathering input, guidance and advice” in Iowa and were not unlike the kinds of conversations that any potential candidate might have at this stage in the process.

“There are people that want to support her and want to work for her,” he said. “There are a lot of them in Iowa.”

Other potential Republican candidates are moving slowly in Iowa as well. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has spent relatively little time in the state during the last two years — a dramatic shift from his 2007 strategy of trying to win Iowa with an early barrage of money and time.

But others are being more open about their ambitions in the state. Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, is scheduled to spend two days in Iowa at the end of this month as part of a tour promoting his book.

Representative Michele Bachman of Minnesota is scheduled to arrive in Des Moines this weekend to headline the annual reception for Iowans for Tax Relief. And Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, is set to give a talk to the Iowa Renewable Fuel Association’s annual meeting in Des Moines a week later.

Taken together, the steps by Ms. Palin and the others suggest that the 2012 campaign for president is beginning to pick up some steam.

But advisers to several of the politicians have said they would like to push back any official announcements as far as they can. Forming an exploratory committee and becoming an official candidate trigger costly legal requirements that require sophisticated fund-raising efforts to support.

And many of them don’t have that — yet.

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Sarah Palin said in a television interview on Monday evening that she agreed with bipartisan calls for civility in the wake of the Arizona shooting rampage, but she vowed not to be deterred or silenced by critics as she decides whether to run for president.

“Peaceful dissent and discussion about ideas, that is what makes America exceptional,” Ms. Palin said in a prime-time appearance on the Fox News Channel. “We won’t allow that to be stifled by a tragic event in Arizona.”

Ms. Palin, the former governor of Alaska, said she had not yet decided what course her political future would take, but declared: “I’m not going to sit down. I’m not going to shut up.”

In her first television interview since the Arizona shooting, Ms. Palin defended using the term “blood libel” to describe what she said was a rush to judgment by her critics. Some drew a link between heated political rhetoric and the shooting that killed six people and wounded 13, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Ms. Palin dismissed suggestions that she did not know the historical significance of the phrase, which originated in the Middle Ages with accusations of Jews using the blood of Christians in religious rituals.

“Blood libel obviously means being falsely accused of having blood on your hands,” she said, “and in this case that’s exactly what was going on.”

The 30-minute interview with Sean Hannity, a conservative Fox host, came five days after Ms. Palin was criticized by Democrats and several Republicans for a video message she released after the shooting. Her tone was conciliatory at the opening of the appearance on Monday evening, and she repeatedly said she was not trying to engage in an act of political self-defense.

“This isn’t about me,” Ms. Palin said, speaking from a television studio in her home in Wasilla, Alaska. “My defense wasn’t self-defense, it was defending those who were falsely accused.”

Ms. Palin expressed her condolences to the victims of the shooting. She recited a verse from the Book of Jeremiah, asking that God touch and comfort the families. She acknowledged that she and her family receive death threats, but she offered no specific details.

Ms. Palin, who is a paid Fox analyst, has been uncharacteristically quiet since the shooting. Several Republicans had urged her to come forward and join the national discussions about political civility.

In the interview, Ms. Palin defended using a map in last year’s midterm elections with cross hairs over several swing Congressional districts, including Ms. Giffords’s, which the congresswoman highlighted at the time as an example of overheated political speech. Ms. Palin rejected suggestions that the map played any role in the shooting, but said she did not object to it being removed from her Web site.

As the field of potential 2012 Republican presidential contenders begins taking shape, Ms. Palin has given few signals about whether she intends to enter the race. She said Monday that she was “not ready to make an announcement” but would disclose her plans “at the appropriate time.”

The television appearance provided a friendly platform for Ms. Palin. As the interview drew to a close, Mr. Hannity asked her whether the controversy had caused long-term damage to her political career.

“In a situation like we have just faced in these last eight days of being falsely accused of being an accessory to murder,” Ms. Palin said, “I and others need make sure that we, too, are shedding light on truth so a lie cannot continue to live.

“If a lie does live, then of course your career is over and your reputation is thrashed and you will be ineffective in what we intend to do.”

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