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Pompeo blasts Biden for overturning US policy, calling settlements ‘illegal’

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Pompeo said Biden’s policy ‘rewards Hamas for its brutal attacks on October 7th and punishes Israel instead.’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State during the Trump Administration, lambasted the Biden Administration’s declaration that 3,000 new settlement homes are “inconsistent with international law.”

Mike Pompeo, who was responsible for the “Pompeo Doctrine” in 2019 declaring that settlements in Judea and Samaria don’t violate international law, took to X to voice his disapproval of the reversal of his policy.

He wrote, “Judea and Samaria are rightful parts of the Jewish homeland, and Israelis have a right to live there.”

Pompeo added, “President Biden’s decision to overturn our policy and call Israeli ‘settlements’ illegal will not further the cause of peace.”

“It rewards Hamas for its brutal attacks on October 7th and punishes Israel instead. These Israeli communities are not standing in the way of peace; militant Palestinian terrorism is,” Pompeo concluded.

The current US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said he was “disappointed” over the announcement by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that the Israeli government would approve the building of 3,000 new settlement homes in Judea and Samaria following the deadly terrorist shooting outside Ma’ale Adumim.

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Blinken said, “Our administration maintains firm opposition to settlement expansion. And in our judgment, this only weakens — it doesn’t strengthen — Israel’s security.”

When asked about the decision to reverse the Pompeo doctrine and declare settlements inconsistent with international law, White House spokesman John Kirby blamed the administration of Donald Trump for changing the policy on settlements.

“This is a position that has been consistent over a range of Republican and Democratic administrations — if there’s an administration that is being inconsistent, it was the previous one,” he said.

On Friday, Bezalel Smotrich announced the building of new settlements in response to a terrorist shooting on Thursday that left 1 person dead and 11 injured.

“May every terrorist planning to harm us know that lifting a finger against Israeli citizens will be met with a death blow and destruction in addition to the deepening of our eternal grip on the entire Land of Israel,” Smotrich said, calling the decision “an appropriate Zionist response.”