Pompeo visit includes talks on annexation
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the country’s plans to annex parts of the West Bank, as Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian teen in a clash with stonethrowers in the occupied territory.
Pompeo’s eighthour visit to Israel came at a tense time, as Israeli troops searched for the killers of a soldier killed a day earlier by a rock dropped from a rooftop during an army raid of a West Bank village.
With President Trump facing election in November, Netanyahu and his nationalist base are eager to move ahead quickly with annexing portions of the West Bank. Annexation is expected to appeal to Trump’s proIsrael evangelical supporters, but is also bound to trigger widespread international condemnation. It would crush already faint Palestinian hopes of establishing a viable state alongside Israel, on lands Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Pompeo landed in Tel Aviv early Wednesday, donning a red, white and blue face mask, and headed directly to Jerusalem, receiving an exemption from Israel’s mandatory twoweek quarantine for arrivals due to the coronavirus outbreak. He is the first foreign official to visit Israel since January, before the country largely shut its borders to curb the pandemic.
One of the key items on the agenda in Pompeo’s talks Wednesday was expected to be Israel’s stated intention to annex parts of the West Bank.
Pompeo said “there remains work yet to do and we need to make progress on that.”
Netanyahu and Benny Gantz struck a powersharing deal last month after three parliamentary elections over the past year resulted in stalemate. Under the deal, Netanyahu would remain prime minister for the next 18 months, even as he goes on trial on charges of fraud, accepting bribes and breach of trust. After a year and a half, Gantz will serve as prime minister for 18 months.
The agreement also stipulates that Netanyahu can advance plans to annex West Bank land, including dozens of Jewish settlements, starting July 1. The deal says such a move must be coordinated with the U.S. while considering regional stability and peace agreements.