Seeking to brush up his foreign policy credentials, Mitt Romney will travel to Israel this summer on a trip that will highlight his warm personal relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and potentially build his support among Jewish and evangelical voters.

A campaign official confirmed that the trip, which had been rumored for months and was first reported Monday by the New York Times, will include a visit with Netanyahu. Romney's team is not yet releasing any other details.

The foreign tour has become a rite of passage for presidential candidates as they try to show voters that they are prepared to lead on the world stage. Romney's visit to Israel will mark a rare diversion from his intensive focus on America's economic plight. Foreign policy issues have largely taken a back seat this year in the matchup between President Obama and the presumptive Republican nominee.

Both Obama and his 2008 rival, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took extensive trips abroad that summer.

Though Obama won 78 percent of Jewish voters in 2008, according to exit polls, Romney's team clearly sees an opening because of disappointment over the lack of progress on Mideast peace talks. While Obama has had a rocky relationship with Netanyahu, Romney enjoys a close relationship with the prime minister that dates back to their work together at the Boston Consulting Group in the mid-1970s.

Romney has sharply criticized the Obama administration's approach toward Israel and the threat of a nuclear Iran, warning an audience at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference earlier this year that Iran would obtain a nuclear weapon if Obama was re-elected. He has argued that Obama did not act quickly enough to enforce crippling sanctions on Iran - putting Israel in jeopardy.

Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition who accompanied Romney on one of his three previous trips to Israel in 2007, noted that there is disappointment within the Jewish community that Obama has not visited Israel as president even though he has traveled extensively in the region.

Romney's upcoming trip, Brooks said, "sends a signal to the Iranians and the people of Egypt, of Syria and all the other areas of concern in that region that this is something he takes very seriously."