Israel will keep the Golan Heights even if international views on Damascus change, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday.
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In 2019, then US President Donald Trump broke with other world powers by recognizing Israel as sovereign on the Golan Heights, diverging in policy from a significant part of the international community.
Bennett's remarks came as the current US administration hedges on the Golan's legal status and some US-allied Arab states ease their shunning of Syrian President Bashar Assad over his handling of a decade-old civil war.
Addressing a conference about Golan's future, Bennett said that despite many in the world now acclimating to the notion of the territory belonging to Israel, "even in a situation in which – as could happen – the world changes tack on Syria, or in relation to Assad, this has no bearing on the Golan Heights. The Golan Heights is Israeli, full stop," he told the forum hosted by the Makor Rishon newspaper.
In his speech, Bennett also pledged to double the size of the Israeli population on the Golan, which is currently about equal to a Druze Arab community that often professes loyalty to Syria.
President Joe Biden's administration, on the other hand, while not changing the policy, has been increasingly circumspect on the Golan issue, describing Israel's hold in de facto rather than de jure terms.
Asked in a February interview if Washington would continue to deem the Golan Heights part of Israel, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken signaled openness to an eventual policy review on the territory.
"As long as Assad is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran... the control of the Golan in that situation, I think, remains of real importance to Israel's security," he told CNN.
"Legal questions are something else. And, over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that's something we'd look at."
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