Trump reverses on Golan Heights
President says U.S. should recognize Israel’s authority
President Donald Trump declared Thursday that the United States should recognize Israel’s authority over the long disputed Golan Heights, delivering a valuable election-eve gift to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but jettisoning decades of U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Trump’s announcement, in a Twitter post, came after pressure from Netanyahu, a close political ally who is fighting for his survival in the election scheduled April 9, and has invoked his friendship with the American president as a prime argument for staying in office.
But Trump’s move, while popular in Israel and among some lawmakers in Congress, is likely to be condemned almost everywhere else. The United Nations has rejected Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights since 1967, when Israeli troops seized the 400 square miles from Syria during the Arabisraeli war.
It could undermine Trump’s long anticipated peace proposal for Israel and the Palestinians. The White House has been enlisting support for the plan among Arab leaders who now face the prospect of acquiescing in the loss of land they had long claimed as Arab.
As a practical matter, Trump’s announcement changes little. There is no negotiation underway on the status of the Golan Heights, nor any expectation that Israel is going to withdraw from it.
But as a symbolic step, the decision is momentous — underlining Trump’s willingness to flout diplomatic orthodoxy and shake up a debate over the Middle East.
“I’ve been thinking about doing that for a long time,” Trump said to Fox Business Network in an interview scheduled to air Friday. “Every president has said ‘do that,’” he said, “I’m the one that gets it done.”
Trump brushed aside suggestions that he was trying to help Netanyahu in the election, professing to be only vaguely aware of the Israeli leader’s political challenges.
Yet unlike the president’s earlier decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which was mandated by Congress and fulfilled a promise he made during the 2016 presidential campaign this latest move was both a first for an American president and almost purely a gesture to Netanyahu.
The Israeli leader welcomed it as such during a meeting in Jerusalem with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“President Trump has just made history,” said a beaming Netanyahu. “He did it again.”
Praising Trump for moving the embassy and for withdrawing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu stridently opposed, the prime minister said, “The message that President Trump has given the world is that America stands by Israel.”
Netanyahu called it “a miracle of Purim,” referring to an ancient Jewish holiday being celebrated this week.
Palestinian officials, who have been alienated from the Trump administration since it moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, predicted that the latest move would ignite a new wave of violence in the region.
“What shall tomorrow bring?” Saeb Erekat, a veteran Palestinian Authority peace negotiator, said in a tweet. “Certain destabilisation and bloodshed in our region.”
The announcement was the latest in a series of steps that have radically reshaped the U.S. role in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
The president cast his decision as being of “critical and strategic importance to the state of Israel.”
Other administration officials and defenders of the policy, including Republican senators, said that Israel’s control of the Golan Heights was critical, with Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militants threatening it from inside war-torn Syria.