Pompeo visits occupied West Bank settlement, infuriating Palestinians

1 / 2
Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi (L) speaks alongside US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following a security briefing on Mount Bental in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights. (AFP)
Short Url
Updated 19 November 2020
Follow

Pompeo visits occupied West Bank settlement, infuriating Palestinians

  • Pompeo also visited the occupied Golan Heights
  • Secretary of State called pro-Palestinian BDS movement a ‘cancer’

JERUSALEM: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday became the first top American diplomat to visit an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank as the State Department in a major policy shift announced that products from the settlements can be labeled “Made in Israel.”
The two moves reflected the Trump administration's acceptance of Israeli settlements, which the Palestinians and most of the international community view as a violation of international law and a major obstacle to peace.
Pompeo also announced that the U.S. would brand the international Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel as “anti-Semitic” and bar any groups that participate in it from receiving government funding. It was not immediately clear which groups would be affected by the move.

Pompeo's announcements were largely symbolic and could be reversed by the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden, who has promised a more evenhanded approach to Israel and the Palestinians. Nonetheless, they illustrated the deep ties between the outgoing Trump administration and the hard-line government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In a Twitter post, Pompeo confirmed his visit to the Psagot winery, located in a settlement near Jerusalem, which released a blended red named for the secretary last year in gratitude for his stance on the settlements. Reporters were not allowed to accompany him.
“Enjoyed lunch at the scenic Psagot Winery today,” he tweeted. “Unfortunately, Psagot and other businesses have been targeted by pernicious EU labeling efforts that facilitate the boycott of Israeli companies. The U.S. stands with Israel and will not tolerate any form of delegitimization.”
The European Union, like most of the world, opposes Israeli settlements and requires imports from the occupied territory to be labeled as coming from the West Bank.
Neither Netanyahu nor Pompeo said anything about the U.S. election. Pompeo, like Trump, has yet to acknowledge Biden's victory. Netanyahu earlier this week congratulated Biden and referred to him as the president-elect in an official statement.

Pompeo later visited the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed. In a break from the rest of the international community, the Trump administration recognized the territory as part of Israel last year.
Pompeo was joined by Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and Avigdor Kahalani, a decorated retired Israeli general famous for leading Israeli forces against a Syrian tank invasion during the 1973 Mideast war.
“You can’t stand here and stare out at what’s across the border and deny the central thing that President Trump recognized, what the previous presidents have refused to do,” Pompeo said. “This is a part of Israel and a central part of Israel.”
Pompeo had earlier announced the U.S. will regard the Palestinian-led boycott movement as “anti-Semitic” and cut off government support for any organizations taking part in it, a step that could deny funding to Palestinian and international human rights groups.
“We will regard the global, anti-Israel BDS campaign as anti-Semitic,” Pompeo said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
“We will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw U.S. government support for such groups," he said, adding that all nations should "recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is.”
BDS organizers cast their movement as a non-violent way of protesting Israel's policies toward the Palestinians modeled on the campaign that helped end apartheid in South Africa. The movement has had some limited success over the years, particularly on college campuses and with artists and entertainers, but no impact on the Israeli economy.
Israel views BDS as an assault on its very existence, and has seized on statements by some supporters to accuse it of anti-Semitism, allegations denied by organizers.
In a statement, the BDS movement reiterated its rejection of “all forms of racism, including anti-Jewish racism,” and accused the U.S. and Israel of trying to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights.
“The BDS movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality, stands with all those struggling for a more dignified, just and beautiful world," it said. "With our many partners, we shall resist these McCarthyite attempts to intimidate and bully Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders into accepting Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism as fate.”
It was unclear what organizations would be at risk of losing funding. Israelis have accused international groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International of supporting BDS, allegations they deny.
Human Rights Watch, whose local director was deported from Israel last year for past statements allegedly in support of BDS, does not call for boycotting Israel but urges companies to avoid doing business in West Bank settlements, saying it makes them complicit in human rights abuses. Amnesty does not take a position on the boycott movement.
“The Trump administration is undermining the common fight against the scourge of antisemitism by equating it with peaceful advocacy of boycotts,” said Eric Goldstein, acting Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
Bob Goodfellow, Amnesty International USA's interim executive director, called the US decision “a gift to those who seek to silence, harass, intimidate and oppress those standing up for human rights around the world.”
Israel passed a 2017 law that bars entry to foreigners who have called for economic boycotts of Israel or its settlements. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution opposing the boycott movement last year, and several U.S. states have enacted anti-BDS laws.
Kate Ruane, senior legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union, said that threatening to block funds to groups that criticize Israel is “blatantly unconstitutional.”
The EU's former foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said while in office that she opposed BDS but backed the movement's right to call for boycotts as freedom of speech.
Virtually all Palestinian civil society groups support the boycott movement. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has already cut off nearly all forms of aid to the Palestinians. Biden has pledged to restore the aid as part of efforts to revive the peace process.
Pompeo spoke at a press conference with Netanyahu, who said the Israel-US alliance had reached “unprecedented heights” under the Trump administration.
Netanyahu thanked the administration for moving its embassy to contested Jerusalem, abandoning the U.S. position that Israeli settlements are contrary to international law, recognizing Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights and taking a hard line against Iran.
Israel captured east Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 war. The Palestinians claim both territories and say the sprawling network of settlements have all but extinguished their hopes for a viable, independent state.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, condemned Pompeo's embrace of the settlements and accused the outgoing U.S. administration of "active participation in the occupation of Palestinian lands."
Turkey, where Pompeo angered officials on Tuesday by meeting with the leader of the world's Orthodox Christians while snubbing the country's leaders, said the visit to the settlement was a “grave step” that violates U.N. resolutions and “legitimizes Israel’s illegal actions.”
Trump's Mideast plan, which overwhelmingly favors Israel and was rejected by the Palestinians, would allow Israel to annex up to a third of the West Bank, including all of its settlements, which are home to nearly 500,000 Israelis.

 


Norway fund’s ethics body reviews Israeli bank stakes over West Bank settler loans

Updated 3 sec ago
Follow

Norway fund’s ethics body reviews Israeli bank stakes over West Bank settler loans

  • Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem

OSLO/LONDON/JERUSALEM: The ethics watchdog for Norway’s $1.9 trillion wealth fund is scrutinizing Israeli banks’ practice of underwriting Israeli settlers’ housebuilding commitments in the occupied West Bank in a review that could prompt up to $500 million in divestments.

The Council on Ethics, a public body set up by the Ministry of Finance, has, however, decided not to object to the Fund’s investments in accommodation platforms such as Airbnb that offer rentals in the Jewish settlements.

The body checks that firms in the portfolio of the world’s largest wealth fund meet ethical guidelines set by Norway’s parliament.

In an interview with Reuters on May 22, Council head Svein Richard Brandtzaeg said it was examining how Israeli banks offer guarantees that protect Israeli settlers’ money if the company building their home in the West Bank should fold.

Other practices are also being looked at “but this is what we can see so far,” he said. “That is what is well documented.” He declined to say how long the review would take.

Brandtzaeg did not name the banks but, at the end of 2024, the fund owned about 5 billion crowns ($500 million) in shares in the five largest Israeli lenders, up 62 percent in 12 months, according to the latest data.

The banks — Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Israel Discount Bank, Mizrahi Tefahot Bank and First International Bank of Israel — did not answer requests for comment.

Since 2020, they have been included in a list of companies with ties to settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories compiled by a UN mission assessing the implications for Palestinian rights.

Latterly, investor concern has grown around the world over a 19-month-old Israeli onslaught that has killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the Gaza Strip in response to an attack by Hamas militants that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.

Around 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Many settlements are adjacent to Palestinian areas and some Israeli firms serve both Israelis and Palestinians.
The United Nations’ top court last year found that Israeli settlements built on territory seized in 1967 were illegal, a ruling that Israel called “fundamentally wrong,” citing historical and biblical ties to the land.

ACCOMMODATION RENTALS IN WEST BANK SETTLEMENTS

In mid-2024, the Council on Ethics began a new review of investments linked to the West Bank and Gaza.

It examined 65 companies but recommended only petrol station chain Paz and telecoms company Bezeq for divestment, resulting in share sales.

The Council also scrutinized some multinationals to see if their activities in the West Bank met its guidelines.

Among them were the accommodation platforms, including Airbnb, Booking.com, TripAdviser and Expedia, named on the UN list and accounting for about $3 billion in Fund investments.

But the Council will not recommend watchlisting or divesting from those, Eli Ane Lund, head of its secretariat, said in the joint interview.

“The company’s activity must have some kind of influence on the (ethical) violations,” she said. “It’s not (enough) to have a connection, it has to have something to do with the violation, it must contribute to it.”

The Council’s recommendations go to the central bank, which is not obliged to follow them but generally does.

If investments are sold, it is done gradually to avoid alerting markets, and the decision is then made public.

Pro-Palestinian campaigners say the Council sets its bar too high for recommending divestments, and that the Norwegian government should instruct the fund to conduct a general divestment from Israel just as it did for Russia in 2022, three days after Moscow invaded Ukraine.

But most lawmakers support the Council’s approach, and are set on Wednesday to formally endorse a parliamentary finance committee’s decision not to order a wholesale boycott.


Syrian pro-Assad fighter jailed for life in Germany for crimes against humanity

Updated 03 June 2025
Follow

Syrian pro-Assad fighter jailed for life in Germany for crimes against humanity

BERLIN: A German court on Tuesday convicted a Syrian man of crimes against humanity and jailed him for life over offenses committed during his time fighting for former President Bashar Assad.
The court in the city of Stuttgart found the former militiaman guilty of crimes including murder and torture after a trial which involved testimony from 30 witnesses.
Shortly after the outbreak of anti-Assad protests in early 2011, the man joined a pro-government Shia militia in the southern town of Bosra Al-Sham.
He proceeded to take part in several crimes against the local Sunni population with the aim of “terrorizing” them and driving them from the town, the court found.
German authorities have pursued several suspects for crimes committed in Syria’s civil war under the principle of universal jurisdiction, even after Assad’s ouster last December.
In 2022, former Syrian colonel Anwar Raslan was found guilty of overseeing the murders of 27 people and the torture of 4,000 others at the notorious Al-Khatib jail in 2011 and 2012.
That was the first international trial over state-sponsored torture in Syrian prisons and was hailed as “historic” by human rights activists.


More than 4 million refugees have fled Sudan since war began, UN says

Updated 03 June 2025
Follow

More than 4 million refugees have fled Sudan since war began, UN says

GENEVA: The number of people who have fled Sudan since the beginning of the war has surpassed 4 million, a spokesperson for the UN refugee agency said on Tuesday.
UNHCR spokesperson Eujin Byun told a Geneva press briefing that the milestone was reached on Monday and that the scale of displacement was “putting regional and global stability at stake.”


US to eventually reduce military bases in Syria to one: US envoy

Updated 03 June 2025
Follow

US to eventually reduce military bases in Syria to one: US envoy

ISTANBUL: The United States has begun reducing its military presence in Syria with a view to eventually closing all but one of its bases there, the US envoy for the country has said in an interview.
Six months after the ouster of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad, the United States is steadily drawing down its presence as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), a military task force launched in 2014 to fight the Daesh group (IS).
“The reduction of our OIR engagement on a military basis is happening,” the US envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, said in an interview with Turkiye’s NTV late on Monday.
“We’ve gone from eight bases to five to three. We’ll eventually go to one.”
But he admitted Syria still faced major security challenges under interim leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, whose Islamist-led coalition toppled Assad in December.
Assad’s ouster brought an end to Syria’s bloody 14-year civil war, but the new authorities have struggled to contain recent bouts of sectarian violence.
Barrack, who is also the US ambassador to Turkiye, called for the “integration” of the country’s ethnic and religious groups.
“It’s very tribal still. It’s very difficult to bring it together,” he said.
But “I think that will happen,” he added.
The Pentagon announced in April that the United States would halve its troops in Syria to less than 1,000 in the coming months, saying the IS presence had been reduced to “remnants.”


Gaza officials say Israeli forces killed 27 heading to aid site. Israel says it fired near suspects

Updated 03 June 2025
Follow

Gaza officials say Israeli forces killed 27 heading to aid site. Israel says it fired near suspects

  • UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday condemned the killing of more 30 Palestinians
  • He called for an “immediate and independent investigation” into the incident

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Palestinian health officials and witnesses say Israeli forces fired on people as they headed toward an aid distribution site on Tuesday, killing at least 27, in the third such incident in three days.

The army said it fired “near a few individual suspects” who left the designated route, approached its forces and ignored warning shots.

The near-daily shootings have come after an Israeli and US-backed foundation established aid distribution points inside Israeli military zones, a system it says is designed to circumvent Hamas.

The United Nations has rejected the new system, saying it doesn’t address Gaza’s mounting hunger crisis and allows Israel to use aid as a weapon.

The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of casualties on Tuesday.

It previously said it fired warning shots at suspects who approached its forces early Sunday and Monday, when health officials and witnesses said 34 people were killed.

The military denies opening fire on civilians or blocking them from reaching the aid sites.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which operates the sites, says there has been no violence in or around them. On Tuesday,

it acknowledged that the Israeli military was investigating whether civilians were wounded “after moving beyond the designated safe corridor and into a closed military zone,” in an area that was “well beyond our secure distribution site.”

‘Either way we will die’ The shootings all occurred at the Flag Roundabout, around a kilometer (1,000 yards) from one of the GHF’s distribution sites in the now mostly uninhabited southern city of Rafah.

The entire area is an Israeli military zone where journalists have no access outside of army-approved embeds.

At least 27 people were killed early Tuesday, according to Zaher Al-Waheidi, the head of the Gaza Health Ministry’s records department.

Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said its field hospital in Rafah received 184 wounded people, 19 of whom were declared dead on arrival and eight more who later died of their wounds.

The 27 dead were transferred to Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis. Yasser Abu Lubda, a 50-year-old displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the shooting started around 4 a.m. in the city’s Flag Roundabout area, around one kilometer (1,000 yards) away from the aid distribution hub.

He said he saw several people killed or wounded. Neima Al-Aaraj, a woman from Khan Younis, gave a similar account.

“There were many martyrs and wounded,” she said, saying the shooting by Israeli forces was “indiscriminate.”

She said she managed to reach the hub but returned empty-handed.

“There was no aid there,” she said. “After the martyrs and wounded, I won’t return,” she said.

“Either way we will die.” Rasha Al-Nahal, another witness, said “there was gunfire from all directions.”

She said she counted more than a dozen dead and several wounded along the road.

She said she also found no aid when she arrived at the distribution hub, and that Israeli forces “fired at us as we were returning.” 3 Israeli soldiers killed in northern Gaza

The Israeli military meanwhile said Tuesday that three of its soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip, in what appeared to be the deadliest attack on Israel’s forces since it ended a ceasefire with Hamas in March.

The military said the three soldiers, all in their early 20s, fell during combat in northern Gaza on Monday, without providing details.

Israeli media reported that they were killed in an explosion in the Jabaliya area.

Israel ended the ceasefire in March after Hamas refused to change the agreement to release more hostages sooner.

Israeli strikes have killed thousands of Palestinians since then, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 people hostage in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel that ignited the war.

They are still holding 58 hostages, a third of them believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.

Israel’s military campaign has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were civilians or combatants.

The ministry is led by medical professionals but reports to the Hamas-run government.

Its toll is seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts, though Israel has challenged its numbers.

Israel says it has killed around 20,000 militants, without providing evidence. Around 860 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the Oct. 7 attack, including more than 400 during the fighting inside Gaza.