Mike Pompeo makes provocative visit to Israeli settlement

Mike Pompeo has visited an archaeological dig run by an Israeli settler group accused of displacing Palestinian families from their homes in occupied neighbourhoods of Jerusalem.

The trip on Wednesday night was the first time a US secretary of state had officially visited a settlement, a deeply provocative move that previous American administrations went to lengths to avoid.

“Wonderful to see the work being done to preserve the ancient @City_of_David and the new discoveries by archaeologists working in the area,” Pompeo, who is on a three-day tour to the region, tweeted on Thursday morning.

The City of David, a huge tourist attraction next to the Old City in East Jerusalem, is run by Elad, an Israeli settler organisation that seeks to strengthen the Jewish presence in the neighbourhood of Silwan at the expense of its Arab residents.

EU diplomats have criticised the dig as seeking to ignore the ancient city’s diverse history in favour of “an exclusively Jewish narrative, while detaching the place from its Palestinian surroundings”.

Elad has expanded by buying Palestinian houses and using Israeli laws that allow the state to take over Palestinian property. Approximately 450 settlers now live alongside almost 10,000 Palestinians in Silwan.

Pompeo’s trip, part of a farewell international tour, is expected to include an equally explosive visit to an Israeli winery in a settlement deep in the occupied West Bank. On Thursday, Pompeo said he would visit the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war and now claims as its own.

Speaking at a press conference with the Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo said the state department had taken “the wrong view of settlements” which he claimed “can be done in a way that [is] lawful, appropriate and proper”. A majority of world powers consider settlements as illegal under international law.

The US’s top diplomat further pleased his Israeli hosts by announcing on Thursday that Washington would consider a Palestinian-led boycott movement “antisemitic” and cut off government support for any organisations taking part in it.

“We will regard the global, anti-Israel BDS campaign as antisemitic,” Pompeo said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Other countries, such as Germany, have also condemned BDS as antisemitic.

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The US step could deny funding to Palestinian and international rights groups that Israel has associated with BDS, which describes itself as a non-violent pressure movement modelled on efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. BDS has rejected all claims of antisemitism.

“[The] Trump administration is undermining the common fight against the scourge of antisemitism by equating it with peaceful advocacy of boycotts,” said Eric Goldstein, the acting Middle East and north Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“Americans have a long history of supporting peaceful boycotts to promote social justice and human rights, like the civil rights boycotts in Mississippi or those against apartheid South Africa.”

Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has emboldened the Israeli government and powerful settler movement. The US ambassador to Israel and vocal supporter of settlements, David Friedman, took part in a ceremony at the City of David last year.