Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is set to visit the Golan Heights and an Israeli settlement in the West Bank during his trip next week, which will make him the first U.S. Secretary of State to do so, Axios reports.
Pompeo’s itinerary for next week includes a trip to the two locations, both of which are in territory that the international community considers Israel to be illegally occupying. President Donald Trump’s administration officially recognized the Golan Heights as Israel’s last March, reversing decades of U.S. policy that said Israel was illegally occupying the region that it captured in the Six Day War in 1967 from Syria.
Last November, the secretary annulled a 1978 decision from the State Department that declared Israel’s West Bank settlements “inconsistent with international law,” a move that came just a week after the European Union’s high court rules that any member states in the EU must label products that come from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, after a winery in the Psagot settlement appealed the initial decision.
Among the stops on the trip will be at this winery in the Psagot settlement, named a series of wine after Pompeo and sent a case to him after he annulled the State department legal opinion.
The visit also follows the administration’s recent decision to remove restrictions on the U.S. investing in various projects being carried out in Israeli settlements.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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