US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday was set to
make the first visit by an American top diplomat to the Israel-occupied Golan
Heights, which the Jewish nation is in control of since the 1967 war, AFP
reported.

The top diplomat said after a stop in a West Bank Jewish
settlement, he will move to visit the Golan Heights. The decision to visit West
Bank settlements has come to much consternation of Palestinians, who see the
building construction there as an encroachment of their land.

Pompeo is in Israel to discuss the Abraham Accord with the
country. The Accords signify two separate treaties signed in September this
year between Israel and UAE, and Israel and Bahrain.

The treaty was first in 25 years to happen between Israel
and an Arab nation.

Meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Pompeo also
called the pro-Palestinian BDS movement a “cancer” and labeled it “anti-Semitic”.

“… today I will get a chance to visit the Golan
Heights,” the strategic territory the Jewish state seized from Syria in
the Six-Day War of 1967,” he said after meeting Netanyahu, a close US ally.

Golan Heights, originally a part of Syria, is under Israeli
occupation since 1967 war, when it got hold of it along with Egyptian and Jordanian
territory.  

Last year, Trump’s administration made a decision to
recognise Israeli sovereignty in the Heights, a move Pompeo on Thursday called
“historically important and simply a recognition of the reality.”

Pompeo also announced a new strongly pro-Israeli policy,
stating that from now Washington would designate as “anti-Semitic”
the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, which seeks to isolate Israel
over its treatment of the Palestinians.

“We will immediately take steps to identify
organisations that engage in hateful BDS conduct and withdraw US government
support for such groups,” Pompeo said in a joint appearance with
Nentanyahu, AFP reported.

“We want to stand with all other nations that recognise
the BDS movement for the cancer that it is.”

BDS is a pressure movement founded in 2005 by Palestinian
activists to force Israel to comply with international laws and execute its
obligations by withdrawing from the territories it has occupied, and grant equality
to Palestinian citizens of Israel.  

Israel, on the other hand, sees BDS as a strategic threat
and has long accused it of anti-Semitism.