Netanyahu: The Golan Heights will remain Israeli forever!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Monday that the part of the Syrian Golan Heights occupied and annexed by his country will remain Israeli forever, following the fall of former President Bashar al Assad.

“Today, everyone understands the great importance of our presence in the Golan, not on the slopes of the Golan,” Netanyahu said during a press conference in Jerusalem.

He added that “the Golan will be part of the State of Israel forever,” noting that it overlooks the Galilee Highlands and the Sea of ​​Galilee.

Israel occupied most of the Syrian plateau in 1967, and repelled a Syrian attack aimed at reclaiming it in the 1973 war before annexing it in 1981.

Netanyahu stressed that “our control of the Golan Heights guarantees our security… It guarantees our sovereignty”.

“I would like to thank my friend, President-elect Donald Trump, for responding to my request to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in 2019,” he continued, referring to a decision Trump made during his first term (2017-2021) that contradicts several UN resolutions that stated that the Golan remains occupied, with the international community not recognizing its annexation by Israel.

Netanyahu announced on Sunday that he had ordered the army to take control of the buffer zone adjacent to the occupied part of the Golan.

The United States announced on Monday that Israel’s incursion into the buffer zone in the Golan should only be “temporary”.

“It’s an interim step they took in response to the Syrian military’s withdrawal from this area… Now, what we ultimately want to see is a full commitment to this agreement, and we’ll be watching to see Israel do that,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

Miller explained that Israel said that what they are doing is temporary to defend their borders, and these aren’t permanent steps, and ultimately we want to see permanent stability between Israel and Syria, and that means that we support all parties respecting the 1974 disengagement agreement.