The State Department did not immediately confirm the stops.
Washington:
Mike Pompeo next week will become the first US Secretary of State to visit one of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which are considered illegal by most countries around the world, reports said Thursday.
Pompeo will visit the Psagot cave in the West Bank and will also be the first Secretary of State to visit the Golan Heights, whose annexation by Israel has been recognized by President Donald Trump, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz and the website reported. Axios information.
The State Department did not immediately confirm the stops. In a statement on Tuesday, he only indicated that Pompeo would visit Israel and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Pompeo’s trip comes two months before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden, a former settler critic who pledged to make more diplomatic efforts to create a Palestinian state.
The visit comes exactly one year after Pompeo said the United States did not consider Jewish settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to be illegal, putting Washington at odds with UN Security Council resolutions and virtually everyone else. countries except Israel.
The Psagot winery was at the center of a dispute as it unsuccessfully challenged a European decision to put a label on all products from settlements on occupied land.
Axios and Haaretz pointed out that Psagot then launched a wine label named after Pompeo in homage to his position.
Aaron David Miller, a veteran US diplomat in the Middle East who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tweeted that Pompeo’s visit would continue his run as “America’s worst secretary of state.”
“This is not about the policy of Trump or Bibi, but of Pompeo and 2024,” he wrote, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.
Pompeo has kept few secrets about his aspirations for higher office and has frequently emphasized his support for Israel, a major cause for the evangelical Christian base of his Republican Party.
Pompeo has backed Trump as he refuses to concede but Netanyahu praised Biden, who has known the Israeli leader for many years.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
