The Biden administration reaffirmed on Monday that the Golan Heights is sovereign Israeli territory, a continuation of former President Donald Trump‘s decision in 2019 to give the northern region formal U.S. recognition.
Asked about the administration’s stance on the issue during a call with reporters, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that there had been no policy change.
“The policy on the Golan Heights has not changed under this administration,” Kirby said, referring to a previous statement from Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the matter.
The top American diplomat “addressed this a couple of years ago, when he said that, leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is important to Israeli security,” said Kirby.
Blinken made the remarks during an interview with CNN a few weeks after President Joe Biden took office, adding that “legal questions are something else and over time if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we look at, but we are nowhere near that.”
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and Iranian-backed militia groups pose a “significant security threat” to Israel, he said.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.
“We continue to recognize the circumstances that were in the 2019 proclamation recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights,” said Kirby on Monday.
“As that proclamation stated, and I quote from it, ‘aggressive acts by Iran and terrorist groups, including Hezbollah in southern Syria, continue to make the Golan Heights a potential launching ground for attacks on Israel.’ So again, no change to the policy.”
On Saturday, Iran’s Lebanese terror proxy Hezbollah launched a rocket that killed 12 children and teens at a soccer pitch in the Druze town of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. Over 40 others were wounded in the single deadliest attack by Hezbollah since joining the war on Oct. 8 in support of Hamas.
Israel’s Security Cabinet on Sunday authorized the prime minister and defense minister to decide the manner and timing of the retaliation for the terror group’s deadly strike on the Golan Heights.
