Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vow to take ownership of West Bank land loomed large over the quick visit. But friction over Chinese investments in Israel was also on the agenda.
With Israel preparing to annex territory in the occupied West Bank and a flurry of clashes claiming the lives of an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian teenager, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Jerusalem on Wednesday promising to push ahead with the Trump administration’s proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“There remains work yet to do, and we need to make progress on it,” Mr. Pompeo said of the administration’s “vision for peace” at the start of a lightning-quick, seven-hour visit. It is the first official trip to Israel by any country’s diplomats since the coronavirus pandemic shunted face-to-face meetings onto videoconferences.
Mr. Pompeo, who disembarked from his jet wearing a red, white and blue mask, said his meetings with Israeli leaders would also address efforts to fight the coronavirus and to stop Iran’s nuclear project and contain its expansionist moves in the Middle East.
But in brief remarks alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Pompeo, no longer wearing his mask, also revealed that China, a rare sore spot between the United States and Israel, was also very much on the agenda.
“You’re a great partner,” Mr. Pompeo said to Mr. Netanyahu. “You share information, unlike some other countries that try and obfuscate and hide information. We’ll talk about that country, too.”
Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Trump have engaged in a war of words with China over its handling of the virus outbreak that first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan, giving credence to suggestions that the virus originated in a government laboratory, which the Chinese have vehemently denied and virologists have widely discounted.
Last week, Mr. Pompeo said China “could have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide” and “spared the world descent into global economic malaise.” He add, “China is still refusing to share the information we need to keep people safe.”
But Mr. Pompeo’s pointed reference to China in Mr. Netanyahu’s presence was not just a surprising attempt to draw Israel into a venomous dispute on the American side; it was also a thinly veiled allusion to a source of growing friction between Israel and the United States.
Israel has antagonized Washington by allowing Chinese companies to make major infrastructure investments in recent years, including in sensitive locations.
In Haifa, a company majority-owned by the Chinese government has struck a 25-year lease to run Israel’s commercial seaport beginning in 2021; it is a frequent port of call for the United States Navy’s Sixth Fleet. And in another strategic spot near Israel’s Palmachim air force base, a Hong Kong-based company, Hutchison Water International, is a finalist to build a desalination plant that Israel says will be the largest in the world.
