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| Trump says US will recognize Israel's sovereignty over Golan Heights | Trump says US will recognize Israel's sovereignty over Golan Heights |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| Donald Trump has announced that the US will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition. | Donald Trump has announced that the US will recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, in a dramatic move likely to bolster Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes to win re-election, but which will also provoke international opposition. |
| Previous US administrations have treated Golan Heights as occupied Syrian territory, in line with UN security council resolutions. Trump declared his break with that policy, in a tweet on Thursday. | |
| He said: “After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability!”. | |
| By defying a 52-year-old unanimously-adopted UN resolution on “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”, Trump has also broken the postwar norm of refusing to recognise the forcible annexation of territory – which has underpinned western and international opposition to Russian annexation of Crimea. | |
| “It makes it quite hard for the US to continue to contest Russia’s annexation of Crimea under the principle that taking territory by force is illegal,”Ilan Goldenberg, a former senior state department official, said. “We now have no leg to stand on and the Russians will use it.” | |
| Netanyahu, the Israeli PM, quickly tweeted his gratitude for Trump’s gesture. | |
| “At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” the Israeli prime minister wrote. “Thank you President Trump!” | “At a time when Iran seeks to use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel, President Trump boldly recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” the Israeli prime minister wrote. “Thank you President Trump!” |
| The announcement came as Netanyahu was hosting the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo in Jerusalem. | |
| “President Trump has just made history,” Netanyahu said. “I called him. I thanked him on behalf of the people of Israel … The message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel.” | |
| Pompeo said: “President Trump made a bold decision to recognize that, an important decision for the people of Israel.” | |
| The announcement marks a diplomatic coup for Netanyahu, two weeks before a close fought election, and four days before he is due to visit Washington. | |
| US alters Golan Heights designation from 'Israeli-occupied' to 'Israeli-controlled' | US alters Golan Heights designation from 'Israeli-occupied' to 'Israeli-controlled' |
| Administration officials had previously rebuffed Netanyahu’s pressure for recognition of Israel’s possession of the strategic border area, pointing out that Trump had already handed the Israeli leader a significant political gift by moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. | Administration officials had previously rebuffed Netanyahu’s pressure for recognition of Israel’s possession of the strategic border area, pointing out that Trump had already handed the Israeli leader a significant political gift by moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. |
| Recognition of the Golan would also set a postwar precedent for endorsing the conquest of territory by force, and could pave the way for US recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Palestinian occupied territories. In a recent state department report on human rights, the administration changed their description of the West Bank and Gaza from “occupied territories” to “Israeli-controlled territories”. | Recognition of the Golan would also set a postwar precedent for endorsing the conquest of territory by force, and could pave the way for US recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Palestinian occupied territories. In a recent state department report on human rights, the administration changed their description of the West Bank and Gaza from “occupied territories” to “Israeli-controlled territories”. |
| “This decision is intensely political (timed to boost Netanyahu’s electoral chances); gratuitous (it will not alter in any way Israel’s control of the Golan Heights); in disregard of international law; and an ominous step at a time when voices in Israel calling for the annexation of the West Bank are growing louder,” said Robert Malley, a former Middle East adviser to Barack Obama and now head of the International Crisis Group. | |
| “It is of a piece with the administration’s one-sided Mideast policy and confirms that its goal is not Arab-Israeli peace but a fundamental redrawing of the parameters that have governed its pursuit.” | |
| From the archive, 15 December 1981: Israelis vote to annex Golan Heights | |
| Israel advanced into the Golan Heights gradually in the years following the 1948 war Arab-Israeli war, and occupied it entirely in the 1967 war. A UN Security Council resolution in that year, declared it to be occupied Syrian territory, and a further resolution, supported by the Reagan administration in 1981, rejected as “null and void” a move to put the area under direct Israeli jurisdiction. | |
| Over the decades there have been a string of abortive attempts to negotiate a peaceful solution to the fate of the Golan Heights – most recently in 2010 when the Obama administration and Netanyahu engaged in secret talks with the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, on a peace treaty involving Israeli withdrawal. | |
| But that effort foundered with the spread of the Arab Spring revolt to Syria, and Assad’s decision to crush the rebellion by massacring protestors in 2011. | |
| Frederic Hof, a former senior state department, involved in those negotiations wrote on Thursday: “Formal annexation will do precisely nothing positive for Israel; it would improve neither the security of the Heights nor of Israel generally; there are no economic or social benefits to be reaped; there will be scant applause for the gesture anywhere in the world, and much scolding.” | |
| Hof added on the Atlantic Council website: “The only parties standing to gain from the gesture are Assad, Iran, and Hezbollah.” | |
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