Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state, who is considering running for the presidency in 2024, said Israel has a biblical claim to the land and is therefore not occupying it, Guardian reported.
“(Israel) is not an occupying nation. As an evangelical Christian, I am convinced by my reading of the Bible that 3,000 years on now, in spite of the denial of so many, (this land) is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people,” he said.
Pompeo also said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is a “terrorist” and hedged on support for a two-state solution.
On the One Decision podcast, he talked about his religious beliefs and US strategic interests. Referring to the occupied West Bank by its Israeli name of Judea and Samaria, he declined to support a two-state solution of an independent Palestine alongside Israel. He said, “I’m for an outcome that guarantees Israeli security and makes life better for everyone in the region.”
Pompeo had once suggested that God had sent Trump to save Israel. It was when Pompeo was secretary of state that the Trump administration negotiated the Abraham accords normalising agreements between Israel and several formerly hostile countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan.
