JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mentioned on Thursday that the Trump administration now seen a world marketing campaign to boycott, dive
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo mentioned on Thursday that the Trump administration now seen a world marketing campaign to boycott, divest from and impose sanctions on Israel as anti-Semitic and can deny authorities help to teams that take part in it.
“We wish to stand with all different nations that acknowledge the B.D.S. motion for the most cancers that it’s,” Mr. Pompeo mentioned on the second day of a go to to Israel as he stood alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who known as the choice “merely great.”
The announcement got here on a whirlwind day of what the Trump administration is portraying as victory laps on its coverage towards Israel and the Palestinians — and of picture ops that could possibly be extremely helpful for Mr. Pompeo, significantly with the evangelical Christian voters he has lengthy courted, if he have been to hunt the Republican nomination for president in 2024.
“The individuals of the guide haven’t had a greater buddy,” Mr. Netanyahu advised him.
Mr. Pompeo famous that on Wednesday night time he had walked by means of the Metropolis of David, an archaeological website simply south of the Previous Metropolis in a neighborhood of East Jerusalem, which a lot of the world considers illegally occupied territory and the Palestinians need because the capital of a future state.
From Jerusalem on Thursday, he was scheduled to cease for lunch at a vineyard in a Jewish settlement within the occupied West Financial institution, changing into the highest-ranking United States official to make such a go to to the territory.
Exterior the US, Jewish settlements within the West Financial institution are broadly thought of a violation of worldwide legislation, however a yr in the past Mr. Pompeo rescinded a decades-old State Division memorandum to that impact.
On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Pompeo plans one other first for a U.S. secretary of state: He’s to helicopter as much as the long-disputed Golan Heights, alongside Israel’s frontier with Syria. Israel annexed the territory in 1981, a transfer that the United Nations Safety Council rejected in a decision primarily based on the precept that “the acquisition of territory by drive is inadmissible.” However President Trump acknowledged Israel’s authority over the Golan in March 2019.
It was not instantly clear what, if any, sensible impact the brand new coverage may need on the B.D.S. motion within the waning days of the Trump administration. Its supporters embrace some massive American church teams and a wide range of liberal advocacy teams.
Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian chief within the West Financial institution who for years has advocated a boycott of Israel, assailed Mr. Pompeo’s announcement. It was, he mentioned, the newest in a collection of Trump administration makes an attempt to throw obstructions into the trail of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. — “obstacles that they suppose are reversible.”
“B.D.S. is a peaceable, nonviolent motion,” Mr. Barghouti mentioned. “It isn’t towards Israeli or Jewish individuals — it’s towards the coverage of occupation and apartheid.”
“Calling it anti-Semitic is one other approach of suppressing individuals’s rights of freedom of expression and freedom of selection,” Mr. Barghouti mentioned, “and in addition a harassment of the American individuals who have the appropriate to decide on whether or not to take part in it or not take part in it.”