Israel is pressing the Trump administration to recognize its sovereignty over the occupied Golan Heights, an Israeli cabinet minister said on Wednesday, predicting U.S. assent could come within months.
Interviewed by Reuters, Intelligence Minister Israel Katz described endorsement of Israel’s 51-year-old hold on the Golan as the proposal now “topping the agenda” in bilateral diplomatic talks with the United States.
Any such move would be seen as a follow-up on the U.S. exit from the international nuclear deal with Iran, and President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the opening of a new U.S. embassy there this month.
Trump’s moves were hailed by Israel and caused deep concern among major European allies of Washington.
“We meet with Israel on a wide range of issues,” a White House official said, but declined to confirm any of the details provided by Katz about the Golan.
The Golan Heights form a strategic plateau between Israel and Syria of about 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles).
It was part of Syria until Israel captured it in the 1967 Middle East war. It moved Israeli settlers into the area that it occupied, and annexed the territory in 1981 in a move not recognized internationally.
Once willing to consider returning the Golan for peace with Syria, the Israelis have in recent years argued that the civil war in Syria and the presence there of an Iranian garrison backing Damascus show they need to keep the strategic plateau.
Katz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, cast the Golan proposal as a potential extension of the Trump administration’s confrontational tack against perceived regional expansion and aggression by Iran, Israel’s arch-enemy.
“This is the perfect time to make such a move. The most painful response you can give the Iranians is to recognize Israel’s Golan sovereignty – with an American statement, a presidential proclamation, enshrined (in law),” he said.
The message to Tehran, Katz said, would be: “You want to destroy (U.S. ally Israel), to generate attacks (against it)? Look, you got exactly the opposite.”
The matter, raised by Netanyahu in his first White House meeting with President Donald Trump in February 2017, is now under discussion at various levels of the U.S. administration and Congress, Katz said.
“I reckon there is great ripeness and a high probability this will happen,” he said. Asked if such a decision could be made this year, he added: “Yes, give or take a few months.”
Asked about Katz’s comments, a U.S. Embassy official in Israel said: “We don’t as a general policy discuss our diplomatic communications.”
Russia, Damascus’s big-power ally, has long insisted that Syria’s territorial integrity should be restored – a position implicitly requiring an eventual return of the part of the Golan occupied by Israel.
Katz, however, played down any prospect of a blow-up between Moscow and Washington, casting the proposed U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan as a piece of a larger Syria mosaic.
