Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made history as the first person in his position to visit an Israeli settlement.
As part of his seven-country visit overseas, Pompeo stopped by the Psagot Winery, located in a West Bank settlement, on Thursday. Its owner has praised the Trump administration’s position on the settlements and named a “special” wine after the secretary of state, NBC reported.
No previous secretary of state has visited a settlement since much of the international community views settlements as a violation of the Geneva Convention principle that says an occupying power is not allowed to transfer their own population into war-won territories. The United States shared this sentiment until recently.
Nearly a year ago, the State Department reversed its long-standing legal opinion finding Israeli settlements in the West Bank “inconsistent with international law.”
Pompeo has not been shy about changing long-standing norms with Israeli relations. U.S. officials stopped publicly referring to the West Bank and the Golan Heights as “occupied territories” in early 2017. They also recognized the Golan Heights, land seized by Israel from Syria in the 1967 conflict, as a part of Israel in March 2019. Additionally, the president moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted Pompeo and Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif al Zayani during his visit to Israel. The unprecedented Arab-Israeli diplomatic meeting in Jerusalem broke symbolic ground while setting the stage for additional pacts to implement the recent normalization deals. The meeting was protested by Palestinian officials.
Pompeo announced that the State Department will begin to view the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement, which encourages people not to purchase products made in Israel until Palestinian lives are improved, as anti-Semitic. The department will withdraw funding for groups that support the boycott movement.
“We will recognize the global BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,” he said, according to the Jerusalem Post. “The time is right… We want to join all other nations that recognize BDS for the cancer that it is.”
