Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said clearly Tuesday in response to hedging remarks on the status of the Golan Heights by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the region will remain Israeli forever.
During his visit to a health clinic in Zarzir, near Nazareth, Netanyahu said, “With an agreement, without an agreement, we are not coming down from the Golan. It will remain a sovereign part of the State of Israel.”
Blinken had said during an interview with CNN on Monday night that “As a practical matter, the control of the Golan in that situation I think remains of real importance to Israel’s security.
“Legal questions are something else and over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we’d look at, but we are nowhere near that,” he added.
The American Secretary noted that the Syrian government of President of Bashar al-Assad and the presence of Iranian proxy militias pose a “significant security threat” to Israel.
The United States under the former Trump Administration officially recognized the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory in 2019. The move represented a radical shift away from decades of US political ambivalence.
The Netanyahu government responded shortly thereafter by honoring the American leader by approving the establishment of a new community in the Golan Heights to be named “Ramat Trump” (in English, Trump Heights).