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Donald Trump roils West Asia with Golan Heights policy shift
Trump’s tweet supporting Israel’s claim of sovereignty over Golan Heights doesn’t change much on the ground but it was condemned by most major players in the region and might further imperil his long-awaited West Asia peace initiative.
US President Donald Trump’s tweet supporting Israel’s claim of sovereignty over Golan Heights, which it seized from Syria in 1967, doesn’t change much on the ground but it was condemned by most major players in the region and might further imperil his long-awaited West Asia peace initiative.
Syria has protested and vowed to recover the lost territory “by all available means”, and its allies, Russia and Iran, have also condemned Trump’s announcement. And US allies, the European Union and Turkey for instance, have also criticized it, saying they will continue to hold Golan Heights as occupied territory.
Trump’s tweet, which seeks to reverse decades-old US policy of calling Golan Height as occupied territory, as does the United Nations and other countries, was widely seen as a gift to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
The two leaders have been close supporters of each other, and the tweet was called an attempt to boost the Israeli leader’s re-election chances amidst corruption allegations, coming as it did, just three weeks ahead of polling.
Trump has denied his announcement has anything to do with the Israeli election. “I’ve been thinking about doing that for a long time,” he told Fox News in an interview on Friday. “Every president has said ‘do that,” he added, “I’m the one that gets it done.”
This is what he tweeted Thursday “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!”
The Trump administration was widely seen to have been moving in that direction for a while. In its most recent human rights report, for instance, the US state department described Golan Heights as “Israeli-controlled”, switching from “Israeli-occupied”, dropping the word “occupied”.
Trumps tweet is not going to change much for now as no negotiations are under way on the status of Golan Heights. It might, in fact, undermine his long-awaited West Asia peace plan initiative, which has already called a non-starter by the Palestinians angered by the US recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which also reversed a long-running US policy and violated a global consensus on calling it a disputed city with Palestinians claiming parts of it.
