Visit ‘inspires’ Pence, angers Palestine
ISRAEL: United States VicePresident Mike Pence wrapped up a four-day Middle Eastern tour yesterday with a visit to one of Judaism’s holiest sites, a symbolic end to a trip that has further enhanced the administration’s relationship with Israel but apparently widened a split with the Palestinian leadership.
Prospects of reigniting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, a goal that Pence has said he believes is still achievable, seemed more elusive than ever.
A senior White House official said there has been no contact with the Palestinian leadership since President Donald Trump’s December 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Pence was welcomed by Israelis, meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and speaking before lawmakers at the Knesset. But Palestinian officials snubbed the visit, instead calling for a national strike and public protests. In Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, head of the militant Palestinian faction Hamas, said Pence was ‘‘not welcome’’. He called on all Palestinian factions to unite and agree on ‘‘resistance in all forms’’.
The White House official, who wished to remain anonymous, said that even though ‘‘the US now recognises Jerusalem as the capital, the Trump administration holds that the specific boundaries of Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem is to be worked out between the parties and is a finalstatus issue’’.
Pence’s visit to the Western Wall was seen by Israelis as a continuing affirmation of the Trump administration’s close alignment with the Jewish state. Pence is the second senior US leader in less than a year to make a personal visit to the Western Wall, which is known in Hebrew as the ‘‘Kotel’’. In May, Trump became the first sitting US president to visit the site. While it is customary for visiting dignitaries to go to the Western Wall – the outer wall of the raised esplanade that is called the Temple Mount by Jews and alHaram al-Sharif by Muslims – US leaders previously have deferred the visit because that part of Jerusalem sits on highly contested and sensitive territory captured by Israel in 1967.
A statement from the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which manages the holy site, said Pence recited psalms and slipped a private note in the wall, a customary practice for Jews who believe it is a place where God is listening. When an Israeli journalist asked him how he felt, the vice president said, ‘‘inspired’’.
Pence’s two-day stay in Israel – he visited Jordan and Egypt earlier – was received enthusiastically by Israeli leaders, who in recent years have been used to a more critical approach from the Obama administration.
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