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Pompeo Visits West Bank Settlement and Offers Parting Gifts to Israeli Right

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HR King
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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the boycott-Israel movement would be treated as anti-Semitic, and ordered that imports from Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank be labeled products of Israel.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday became the most senior U.S. official to visit an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank and announced two more policy shifts that cheered Israel’s right wing but were denounced by the Palestinians.
He declared that the Trump administration now viewed an international campaign to boycott Israel as anti-Semitic, and then unveiled new guidelines to ensure that goods exported to the United States from many Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank would be labeled “made in Israel.”
The secretary’s day was a whirlwind victory lap over the Trump administration’s many moves in support of Israel — and a string of photo opportunities that could be highly useful for Mr. Pompeo, particularly with the evangelical Christian voters he has long courted, if he were to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2024.
“We want to stand with all other nations that recognize the B.D.S. movement for the cancer that it is,” he said, referring to the campaign to boycott, divest from and impose sanctions on Israel. Speaking alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said the United States would deny government support to groups that embrace B.D.S.
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Mr. Netanyahu called the decision “simply wonderful.”
Modeled on the fight against apartheid in South Africa, B.D.S. seeks to mobilize international economic and political pressure on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians. Its supporters include some large American church groups and a variety of liberal advocacy groups.
Is B.D.S. Anti-Semitic? A Closer Look at the Boycott Israel Campaign
July 27, 2019

From Jerusalem, Mr. Pompeo drove on Thursday to Qasr el-Yahud, an Israeli-controlled area on the banks of the Jordan River that is known as the traditional scene of Jesus’s baptism. He then flew by helicopter to the visitor center of the Psagot winery in a Jewish settlement near the West Bank city of Ramallah.



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Mr. Pompeo, left, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Thursday.Credit...Pool photo by Maya Alleruzzo
In another first for a U.S. secretary of state, Mr. Pompeo flew in the afternoon to the long-disputed Golan Heights, along Israel’s frontier with Syria.
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Israel captured the territory from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in 1981, a move that the United Nations Security Council rejected in a resolution based on the principle that “the acquisition of territory by force is inadmissible.” But President Trump recognized Israel’s authority over the Golan in March 2019.
“The people of the book have not had a better friend,” Mr. Netanyahu said to Mr. Pompeo on Thursday morning.
Most of the world considers Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, a violation of international law.
Local Palestinian residents and Israeli land experts say that many of the vines that supply the Psagot winery grow on plundered soil. Several Palestinian families are registered as the legal owners of nearly 20 acres around the settlement that are now planted with the winery’s grapevines.

The Interpreter: Original insights, commentary and discussions on the major news stories of the week.
Mr. Pompeo’s visit, which had not been announced in advance, drew condemnation from Palestinians.

Munif Treish, a 70-year-old Palestinian-American who said his family owned land in Psagot, called it astonishing. “By law, Pompeo is supposed to protect the property and interests of American citizens all over the world,” he said. “But he is coming here to give legitimacy to the Israeli settlers who are trespassing, grabbing and cultivating our land illegally.”

“As secretary of state, he’s the one who should he upholding all the values of the United States — human rights and freedom,” Mr. Treish added. “What happened to all of that? That’s what’s really disgusting. Is he looking for a prize? Is he here to get some political gains?”

The settlement of Psagot was originally established on about 35 acres of public land that the Israeli authorities seized in 1979, ostensibly for security, according to Dror Etkes, a researcher at Kerem Navot, a group that monitors Israeli land policy in the West Bank.

More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/...tion=click&module=Top Stories&pgtype=Homepage
 
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