US State Secretary Visits Wailing Wall In Jerusalem Accompanied By Israeli Prime Minister

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US State Secretary Visits Wailing Wall in Jerusalem Accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited on Thursday the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thereby having refrained from the generally accepted protocol for visiting the shrine

TEL AVIV (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2019) US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited on Thursday the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem accompanied by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thereby having refrained from the generally accepted protocol for visiting the shrine.

Israel's high foreign guests often come to the greatest shrine of Judaism, but they normally do it privately and without official representatives of the Jewish state which is due to the unresolved status of the historical center of Jerusalem.

"U.S. Secretary of State @SecPompeo and Israeli PM @netanyahu visit the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, March 21 2019," the US Embassy in Jerusalem said on Twitter.

Pompeo, whose head was covered with a kippah, talked to rabbis, put a note between the wall's stones that remained from the Jewish temples destroyed in ancient times, and stood in silence, keeping his hand on the wall.

Last year, the shrine was visited by US Vice President Mike Pence, prior to which US President Donald Trump visited it in May 2017.

Both of them made a walk without Israeli leaders.

The Old City with the shrines of Judaism, Christianity and islam is located in the part of Jerusalem that the world community refers to as disputed territories and that the Palestinians want to see as the capital of their own state. Israel considers the entire city, including the districts occupied half a century ago and later annexed, to be its sole and indivisible capital.

Despite recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving the US embassy there in May, Trump's administration has emphasized that the US declarations and actions in no way prejudge the solution of the territorial dispute over the city. Trump, however, has said that he could not imagine a situation in which the Wailing Wall would not be part of the Jewish state.